mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

AppAgentX: Evolving GUI Agents as Proficient Smartphone Users

arXiv 2503.02268 ↗First posted 4 Mar 2025cs.AIcited by 46

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → GUI and mobile agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have led to the development of intelligent LLM-based agents capable of interacting with graphical user interfaces (GUIs). These agents demonstrate strong reasoning and adaptability, enabling them to perform complex tasks that traditionally required predefined rules. However, the reliance on step-by-step reasoning in LLM-based agents often results in inefficiencies, particularly for routine tasks. In contrast, traditional rule-based systems excel in efficiency but lack the intelligence and flexibility to adapt to novel scenarios. To address this challenge, we propose a novel evolutionary framework for GUI agents that enhances operational efficiency while retaining intelligence and flexibility. Our approach incorporates a memory mechanism that records the agent's task execution history. By analyzing this history, the agent identifies repetitive action sequences and evolves high-level actions that act as shortcuts, replacing these low-level operations and improving efficiency. This allows the agent to focus on tasks requiring more complex reasoning, while simplifying routine actions. Experimental results on multiple benchmark tasks demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms existing methods in both efficiency and accuracy. The code will be open-sourced to support further research.

Key facts. Cited by 46 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 22 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2025.

Builds on

22 of 41 references.

Closest ancestors · 7

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024AutoGLM: Autonomous Foundation Agents for GUIs28 Oct
  2. 2024TinyClick: Single-Turn Agent for Empowering GUI Automation9 Oct
  3. 2024DigiRL: Training In-The-Wild Device-Control Agents with Autonomous Reinforcement Learning14 Jun
  4. 2024Mobile-Agent-v2: Mobile Device Operation Assistant with Effective Navigation via Multi-Agent Collaboration3 Jun
  5. 2024MMAC-Copilot: Multi-modal Agent Collaboration Operating Copilot28 Apr
  6. 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perception29 Jan
  7. 2023AppAgent: Multimodal Agents as Smartphone Users21 Dec

Other references · 15

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,568
  3. 2022Large Language Models Can Self-Improvecited by 664
  4. 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 468
  5. 2024WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Modelscited by 438
  6. 2023GPT-Driver: Learning to Drive with GPTcited by 347
  7. 2023Auto-GPT for Online Decision Making: Benchmarks and Additional Opinionscited by 255
  8. 2024Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agentscited by 218
  9. 2023AutoAgents: A Framework for Automatic Agent Generationcited by 216
  10. 2024OmniParser for Pure Vision Based GUI Agentcited by 198
  11. 2023AutoDroid: LLM-powered Task Automation in Androidcited by 184
  12. 2024Ferret-UI: Grounded Mobile UI Understanding with Multimodal LLMscited by 176
3 more
  1. 2023Multimodal Web Navigation with Instruction-Finetuned Foundation Modelscited by 160
  2. 2024UFO: A UI-Focused Agent for Windows OS Interactioncited by 148
  3. 2023SmartPlay: A Benchmark for LLMs as Intelligent Agentscited by 125

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 26; 2026: 20.

46 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025GUI-G2: Gaussian Reward Modeling for GUI Groundingcited by 63
  2. 2025A Survey on (M)LLM-Based GUI Agentscited by 62
  3. 2025LLM-Powered GUI Agents in Phone Automation: Surveying Progress and Prospectscited by 32
  4. 2026ClawGUI: A Unified Framework for Training, Evaluating, and Deploying GUI Agentscited by 14
  5. 2025Hidden Ghost Hand: Unveiling Backdoor Vulnerabilities in MLLM-Powered Mobile GUI Agentscited by 13
  6. 2025Atomic-to-Compositional Generalization for Mobile Agents with A New Benchmark and Scheduling Systemcited by 12
  7. 2025GhostEI-Bench: Do Mobile Agents Resilience to Environmental Injection in Dynamic On-Device Environments?cited by 12
  8. 2025AI Meets Brain: Memory Systems from Cognitive Neuroscience to Autonomous Agentscited by 12
  9. 2025Quick on the Uptake: Eliciting Implicit Intents from Human Demonstrations for Personalized Mobile-Use Agentscited by 11
  10. 2026MementoGUI: Learning Agentic Multimodal Memory Control for Long-Horizon GUI Agentscited by 11
  11. 2025ColorBench: Benchmarking Mobile Agents with Graph-Structured Framework for Complex Long-Horizon Taskscited by 10
  12. 2025EcoAgent: An Efficient Device-Cloud Collaborative Multi-Agent Framework for Mobile Automationcited by 8
34 more
  1. 2025GEM: Gaussian Embedding Modeling for Out-of-Distribution Detection in GUI Agentscited by 8
  2. 2026UI-Zoomer: Uncertainty-Driven Adaptive Zoom-In for GUI Groundingcited by 8
  3. 2026AmbiBench: Benchmarking Mobile GUI Agents Beyond One-Shot Instructions in the Wildcited by 7
  4. 2025OS-MAP: How Far Can Computer-Using Agents Go in Breadth and Depth?cited by 6
  5. 2025CRAFT-GUI: Curriculum-Reinforced Agent For GUI Taskscited by 6
  6. 2025AppAgent-Pro: A Proactive GUI Agent System for Multidomain Information Integration and User Assistancecited by 6
  7. 2025AndroidControl-Curated: Revealing the True Potential of GUI Agents through Benchmark Purificationcited by 6
  8. 2026Mind the Gap: Action Rebinding Attacks against Android GUI Agentscited by 6
  9. 2026GraphPilot: GUI Task Automation with One-Step LLM Reasoning Powered by Knowledge Graphcited by 6
  10. 2025FineState-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Fine-Grained State Control in GUI Agentscited by 5
  11. 2025CORE: Reducing UI Exposure in Mobile Agents via Collaboration Between Cloud and Local LLMscited by 5
  12. 2025Mobile-Agent-RAG: Driving Smart Multi-Agent Coordination with Contextual Knowledge Empowerment for Long-Horizon Mobile Automationcited by 5
  13. 2026PSPA-Bench: A Personalized Benchmark for Smartphone GUI Agentcited by 5
  14. 2026FineState-Bench: Benchmarking State-Conditioned Grounding for Fine-grained GUI State Settingcited by 5
  15. 2026Executable Agentic Memory for GUI Agentcited by 5
  16. 2025Learning to Be A Doctor: Searching for Effective Medical Agent Architecturescited by 4
  17. 2025DuetUI: A Bidirectional Context Loop for Human-Agent Co-Generation of Task-Oriented Interfacescited by 4
  18. 2025See, Think, Act: Teaching Multimodal Agents to Effectively Interact with GUI by Identifying Togglescited by 4
  19. 2025Agent-ScanKit: Unraveling Memory and Reasoning of Multimodal Agents via Sensitivity Perturbationscited by 3
  20. 2025Invisible to Humans, Triggered by Agents: Stealthy Jailbreak Attacks on Mobile Vision-Language Agentscited by 3
  21. 2025RISK: A Framework for GUI Agents in E-commerce Risk Managementcited by 2
  22. 2025Beyond Training: Enabling Self-Evolution of Agents with MOBIMEMcited by 2
  23. 2026Do Multi-Agents Dream of Electric Screens? Achieving Perfect Accuracy on AndroidWorld Through Task Decompositioncited by 2
  24. 2026(A)I Sees What You Don't: Exploiting New Attack Surfaces in Third-Party Mobile Agentscited by 1
  25. 2026Software Engineering for and with GUI Agentcited by 1
  26. 2026SCAFFOLD: Self-Improving Web Agents via Recursive Parametric Skill Abstractioncited by 1
  27. 2025GamerAstra: Supporting 2D Non-Twitch Video Games for Blind and Low-Vision Players through a Multi-Agent Frameworkcited by 0
  28. 2026RiskWebWorld: A Realistic Interactive Benchmark for GUI Agents in E-commerce Risk Managementcited by 0
  29. 2026Do LLMs Need to See Everything? A Benchmark and Study of Failures in LLM-driven Smartphone Automation using Screentext vs. Screenshotscited by 0
  30. 2026Securing Computer-Use Agents: A Unified Architecture-Lifecycle Framework for Deployment-Grounded Reliabilitycited by 0
  31. 2026From Tapping to Hopping: Augmenting Mobile GUI Agents with App-Native Deeplinkscited by 0
  32. 2026DeltaReplay: Task-Relative Memory Reuse for Mobile GUI Agentscited by 0
  33. 2026A Decade in a Day: Synthesizing Agent-Native Interfaces from Human-Oriented Software Evolutioncited by 0
  34. 2026PrivacyGuard: Source-Linked Sanitization and Locally Resolvable PII References for Cloud GUI Agentscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Darwinian Memory: A Training-Free Self-Regulating Memory System for GUI Agent Evolution
  2. 2026MAGNET: Towards Adaptive GUI Agents with Memory-Driven Knowledge Evolution
  3. 2024Large Language Model-Brained GUI Agents: A Survey
  4. 2025API Agents vs. GUI Agents: Divergence and Convergence
  5. 2026APPSim-Bench: Bridging Real-world Apps and Reproducible Evaluation for Mobile GUI Agents
  6. 2026ActionEngine: From Reactive to Programmatic GUI Agents via State Machine Memory
  7. 2026OmegaUse: Building a General-Purpose GUI Agent for Autonomous Task Execution
  8. 2026UI-Voyager: A Self-Evolving GUI Agent Learning via Failed Experience