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Using RoSpy — Windows UI Inspector

RoSpy is a standalone inspector tool for identifying native Windows desktop UI elements, used together with the MS UI Automation component. It lets you point at a control in any Windows application, read its UI Automation properties, and copy a ready-to-use element selector as JSON — the same JSON you paste into the Element field of MS UI Automation activities.

Starting RoSpy

To launch RoSpy, run the executable from the Worker installation directory:

C:\RobustaWorker_GUI\driver\RoSpy.exe
or 
C:\RobustaWorker\driver\RoSpy.exe

# Element Description
1 Fix Now Appears when the screen resolution is not 1920×1080. Coordinate-based selectors require this resolution and 100% display scaling — click Fix Now to apply it.
2 Inspect Starts inspection mode, letting you point at and select a UI element.
3 Refresh Reloads the element tree for the currently connected application.
4 Pin Keeps the RoSpy window on top of the application being inspected.
5 Drivers Opens the driver selection menu (see below).

Inspecting an Element

  1. Click Inspect, then hover over the target element in the application window for about 3 seconds.
  2. The element's properties appear in the Properties panel on the right.
  3. Click Highlight to visually confirm the selected element on screen.

Element Description
Element Tree Shows the full hierarchy of elements in the connected application. You can also select or search for an element directly from this tree.
Show Hidden Shows or hides elements in the tree that are not currently visible on screen.
Properties Displays the selected element's properties, such as Type, Name, AutomationId, ClassName, Location, ProcessId, IsEnabled, IsVisible, and HasKeyboardFocus.
Patterns Displays the UI Automation patterns supported by the selected element (e.g., Value.Value, ScrollItem).

Copying the Element Selector

Once an element is selected, scroll down to the JSON Preview panel to get the selector to use in a process.

  1. Review the generated selector JSON, which typically includes ClassName, BoundingRectangle, ControlType, AutomationId, and Name.
  2. Click Copy JSON to copy the selector to the clipboard.
  3. Paste the copied JSON into the Element field of the target MS UI Automation activity.

Example JSON Structure

{
  "selector": {
    "ClassName": "WindowsForms10.Window.8.app.0.2f3e4cc_r3_ad1",
    "BoundingRectangle": "x=215,y=245,w=200,h=150",
    "ControlType": "Pane",
    "AutomationId": "pbThumbnail"
  },
  "options": {
    "index": 10
  }
}

You can remove any properties you don't need from the copied JSON before pasting it into the Element field — only the properties present are used to locate the element at runtime.

Technical Notes

Coordinate-based selection (using BoundingRectangle) requires the screen resolution to be exactly 1920×1080 with 100% display scaling — use the Fix Now button if RoSpy warns that the resolution doesn't match. The Drivers menu lets you choose which underlying automation frameworks RoSpy uses to detect elements; all drivers are enabled by default.