This driver is an extension of the Selenium C# client. It has all the functionalities of the regular driver, but add Appium-specific methods on top of this.

In case you are using the latest beta client v5.x please be aware you will either have to upgrade your appium server to 2.x or add the base-path argument: appium --base-path=/wd/hub, due to a breaking change on the default server base path.
Regardless, it's highly recommended you move to appium 2.x since appium 1.x is no longer maintained.
For more details about how to migrate to 2.x, see the following link : appium 2.x migrating

Due to the fact that WinAppDriver has been abandoned by MS, running Appium dotnet-client 5.x with WAD will not work since it has not been updated to support the W3C protocol.
In order to run appium on Windows Applications, you will need to use appium-windows-driver which will basically act as a proxy to WAD. Examples of running Windows Applications with dotnet-client can be found here: windows Integration test 5.0.0
Regardless, feel free to open an issue on the WAD repository that will help get MS to open-source that project.

NuGet Package:

Dependencies:

• Selenium.WebDriver
• Newtonsoft.Json
• Selenium.Support
• Castle.Core

Note: we will NOT publish a signed version of this assembly since the dependencies we access through NuGet do not have a signed version - thus breaking the chain and causing us headaches. With that said, you are more than welcome to download the code and build a signed version yourself.

• You need to add the following namespace line: using OpenQA.Selenium.Appium;.
• Use the AppiumDriver class/subclass to construct the driver. It works the same as the Selenium Webdriver, except that the ports are defaulted to Appium values, and the driver does not know how to start the Appium on its own.
• To use the Appium methods on Element, you need to specify the parameter of AppiumDriver or its subclasses.

Read Wiki

See samples here

Xamarin/Mono

• Open with Xamarin
• Rebuild all
• Run tests in test/specs

JetBrains Rider

• Open with Rider
• From the menu Build -> Rebuild Solution
• Run tests in Appium.Net.Integration.Tests

Visual Studio

• Open with Visual Studio
• build solution

• Download Nuget exe.
• Setup the Api Key (see here).
• alias NuGet='mono <Nuget Path>/NuGet.exe'

• update assemblyInfo.cs, RELEASE_NOTES.md, and appium-dotnet-driver.nuspec with the new version number and release details, then check it in
• pull new code
• Rebuild All with Release target.
• NuGet pack appium-dotnet-driver.nuspec
• NuGet push Appium.WebDriver.<version>.nupkg