# UI Explorer

> Cross-platform UI Explorer for building and testing custom selectors for UI elements in Studio Desktop, Studio Web, and Studio on macOS (planned for a future release).

## Overview

**UI Explorer** is a web-based tool for indicating UI elements, inspecting their properties, and generating and editing selectors. It replaces the Windows-only, WPF-based tool as the default selector authoring experience across all Studio flavors, giving you the same selector inspection and tuning workflow whether you're building Windows, macOS, or cross-platform automations.

Because **UI Explorer** runs on a single web-based codebase, it is available consistently in the following places:

- **Studio Desktop on Windows** – for Windows and Cross-platform projects
- **Studio Web** – for Cross-platform projects
- **Standalone tool** – for inspecting or editing selectors outside of a Studio project
- **Studio on macOS** – for macOS target applications (planned for the end of the year)

:::note
The previous Windows-only, WPF-based tool is now referred to as **UI Explorer Classic**. It remains available in Windows Studio Desktop projects, accessible from the new UI Explorer, so existing workflows are not disrupted.
:::

## Core capabilities

UI Explorer lets you:

- **Indicate UI elements**, including:
  - Application windows
  - Individual UI elements
- **Generate and display selectors**, providing the corresponding Unified Target — the target element and its anchors, together with all their configured targeting methods (Selector, Computer Vision, Image, Semantic Selector) — in JSON format
- **Copy selectors** to the clipboard
- **Save selectors** to a file
- **Load existing selectors** for inspection and editing
- **Load selectors generated by UI Automation activities**, including selectors stored in the current XML format

![UI Explorer panel showing the Indicate UI Element, Indicate Application, and Edit Element options](https://dev-assets.cms.uipath.com/assets/images/activities/uiexplorer-modern-c978c2b2.png)

Every **UI Automation activity** that uses a target element now exposes two additional commands in the **Expand target properties** context menu, making it easy to move targets between activities and the new **UI Explorer**:

* **Copy target to clipboard** — Copies the entire Unified Target for the activity's target element, so it can be pasted into the new **UI Explorer** using the **Edit Element** card.
* **Paste target from clipboard** — Pastes a Unified Target for a UI element previously indicated with the new **UI Explorer**.

## Selector format and compatibility

UI Explorer generates and displays selectors in **JSON format**. For backward compatibility, it can also load selectors that were generated by UI Automation activities and stored in the existing **XML format**, so you can inspect or edit selectors from older projects without needing UI Explorer Classic.

## Accessing UI Explorer

| Context | How to access |
|---|---|
| Studio Desktop (Windows) | Available for both Windows and Cross-platform projects |
| Studio Web | Available for Cross-platform projects |
| Standalone | Download from Automation Cloud or the Customer Portal |
| Studio (macOS) | Planned |

## Related pages

- [UI Explorer Classic](https://docs.uipath.com/activities/other/latest/ui-automation/uipath-explorer)
- [Selection Helper](https://docs.uipath.com/activities/other/latest/ui-automation/selection-options)
- [Advanced Selector Editor](https://docs.uipath.com/activities/other/latest/ui-automation/advanced-selector-editor)