Thanks for trying to fix this! It's a long standing issue and I have to tap by coordinates to workaround it 😢

[cameroncooke]

Thanks for trying to fix this! It's a long standing issue and I have to tap by coordinates to workaround it 😢

Unfortunately, I can still reproduce a related issue on AXe 1.7.0 with the built-in Photos app on iOS Simulator. Could you help take a look? Thanks.

Environment:

• AXe 1.7.0
• Xcode 26.5
• iOS 26.5 Simulator
• iPhone 17 Pro

Steps:

xcrun simctl launch <UDID> com.apple.mobileslideshow
axe describe-ui --udid <UDID>

The full hierarchy shows the tab bar as an empty group:

type: Group
AXLabel: Tab Bar
children: []

However, point-based lookup can see the actual tab items:

axe describe-ui --udid <UDID> --point 100,832

returns:

type: RadioButton
role_description: tab
AXLabel: Library
AXUniqueId: LibraryTab
subrole: AXTabButton

and:

axe describe-ui --udid <UDID> --point 201,832

returns:

type: RadioButton
role_description: tab
AXLabel: Collections
AXUniqueId: CollectionsTab
subrole: AXTabButton

But selector taps still fail because the tab items are absent from the full tree:

axe tap --id CollectionsTab --element-type RadioButton --udid <UDID>
axe tap --label Collections --element-type RadioButton --udid <UDID>

Both report No accessibility element matched.

I also tried a minimal custom Swift UI App with TabView, and still hit this issue.

Originally posted by @ShikChen in #47 (comment)

[coderabbitai]

🔗 Related PRs

#9 - Add tap by accessibility id/label [merged]
#20 - fix(touch): make long press gestures reliable [merged]
#44 - fix(commands): orientation-aware coords for both rotated devices and letterboxed landscape-only apps (#5) [merged]
#47 - fix(accessibility): Expose SwiftUI TabView tabs [merged]
#48 - test(accessibility): Add navigation chrome fixtures [merged]

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[cameroncooke]

Thanks for raising, I'll have a look

[cameroncooke]

@ShikChen I’ve been looking into this, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it on either iOS 26.4 or iOS 26.5 using the steps you provided.

Are you trying to script the interaction immediately after launching or navigating? If so, it may be that the accessibility hierarchy hasn’t fully settled by the time AXe reads it.

One approach is to fetch the accessibility layout a few times and hash the response, then wait until the hash is stable across multiple reads. That gives you a stronger signal that the accessibility hierarchy has stopped changing.

You can also use AXe’s waiter options when interacting with elements, for example:

axe tap \
  --id CollectionsTab \
  --element-type RadioButton \
  --wait-timeout 5 \
  --udid <UDID>

or with a label:

axe tap \
  --label Collections \
  --element-type RadioButton \
  --wait-timeout 5 \
  --udid <UDID>

If you can still reproduce it, could you share the exact timing/sequence you’re using, and whether the failure happens immediately after launch or after some navigation?

I'm going to close this issue for now, if you can reliably repo then feel free to reopen. Thanks again for the report.