Imagine a tester who never sleeps, who never gets bored of repeating the same process, who checks your app on hundreds of devices by breakfast. That’s the promise of automated mobile app testing. Software does the repetitive work, so your people can spend their time on the trickier, more creative stuff. Let’s look at how it actually works.
What Is Automated Mobile App Testing?
It’s all about using scripts and tools to test your app, instead of a person going through each screen. You can write the steps once, and the computer can repeat them on every build. It’s fast, it’s reliable, and most importantly, doesn’t need a bathroom break on a Friday afternoon.
How Does an Automated Mobile Test Run, Step by Step?
- Write the script. You tell the computer what to do, in code, or, in the case of some tools, English. ‘Launch the app, log in, add an item to the cart’ becomes ‘The computer launches the app, logs in, and adds an item to the cart’.
- Choose where it runs. Pick a real device, an emulator or a cloud device. Many teams run the same script on several at once.
- Run the test. The tool opens the app and performs each action, just as a person would, only faster.
- Compare the results. At each step, the tool checks what’s happening on screen, against what you told it to do.
- Get the report. A pass means everything matched. Failures usually have a message explaining what went wrong, and/or a screenshot or video so you can see exactly what the computer saw.
- Fix and repeat. Your team fixes any bugs, or updates the script if the app has changed. Then the test runs again on the next build, with nobody clicking through it by hand.
Mobile Test Automation Tools and Frameworks
There are plenty of options, and they fall into three rough groups.
Open Source Frameworks
Appium is the best known, and it works for both Android and iOS. Espresso is built for Android, and XCUITest is built for iOS. They’re free and flexible, but they do need people who can write and maintain code.
Codeless and Plain English Platforms
Although many members of your team may not be experienced in coding, several tools, such as Testsigma, allow non-programmers to design their own tests. Testsigma also supports both Android and iOS, and offers an open source Community Edition, as well as a cloud version. That makes it a handy fit for mixed skill teams.
Real Device Clouds
Buying and maintaining a drawer full of phones grows tiresome. Cloud services let you rent real devices on demand and run one script across many of them. Testsigma’s cloud includes thousands of Android and iOS devices, and larger companies such as BrowserStack and LambdaTest offer grids of real devices too. Pick the one your users use, and you’ll be able to test on those specific devices.
Why Mobile Tests Fail (and How to Fix Them)
Broken builds tend to be caused by changes in the app, such as a move in the layout, or a change in how a field acts. Updating it takes time.
Then there are flaky tests. Sometimes these cause the tests to fail, sometimes they don’t, but sloppily-written test scripts are often the culprit. Self-healing scripts can help, and Testsigma offers AI assisted maintenance for this. Testing on real devices, rather than emulators or simulated devices, can also cut out some of these mismatches.
Fixes:
- Update scripts when the app changes. Make test maintenance part of every release, so broken steps get fixed straight away and don’t pile up.
- Use self healing tools. Some platforms, including Testsigma, adjust to small interface changes automatically, so a moved button doesn’t break your whole suite.
- Run tests on real devices. Emulators can hide problems or invent new ones. Real phones show what your users actually see.
- Write stable tests. Avoid fixed waiting times and fragile element locators. Let tests wait for the app to be ready instead of guessing.
- Fix or delete flaky tests. Don’t ignore a test that fails at random. Find the cause, or remove it, because a test nobody trusts is just noise.
Which Test Cases to Automate First
Start with what hurts most if it breaks. Sign up, login and payment come first. Then think about the awkward edge cases, such as:
- Notifications
- Logging in with an OTP or two factor authentication
- Scanning QR codes
- Using the app in different locations
- Deep links
Mobile App Test Automation Best Practices
- So that staff may focus on exploratory testing, automate the boring processes.
- Test on real devices, rather than emulators.
- Fit testing into the build pipeline, with tools such as Jenkins, or with the cloud version, GitHub or Azure DevOps.
- Mobile App automated testing of edge cases, before your customers do.
- Check the overnight tests first thing in the morning.
- Make sure tests cover enough code, and watch out for large drops in coverage.
Does Automation Replace Manual Testers?
Not really. Automated tests are good for doing the same things, the same way, every time. Boring! For most teams, a mix of automated and manual testing is best, since humans are good at exploring, and finding the odd edge case that the computer didn’t predict.
How to Get Started
Pick one really important process, such as logging in, and automate that. Test it on real devices, and set it to run as part of the build pipeline. If your team isn’t comfortable with coding, you might want to try a codeless tool such as Testsigma. To guarantee that everyone on the team understands the benefits, try it out on a single flow before presenting it to the rest. And finally, don’t keep tests that are always failing, and giving no useful information. They just clutter up the test runs, and should be fixed or deleted.
Final Thoughts
Automated mobile app testing works best when there’s a set way of doing something, that needs to be done again and again. Pick tools that your team will stick with, that allow manual testing while the computer does the tedious stuff, and watch out for those edge cases. Start small, and build up from there.
