Automation is not easy, but the right testing tools can take a lot of the workload off your shoulders and eliminate the chances of error. Mobile automation testing tools are essential for any business as they save time, money, and resources by catching bugs before they reach the end users.
Read this article that enlists the top mobile automation testing tools for businesses and learn more about their capabilities.
Challenges While Performing Mobile App Automation Testing
The difficulty of developing better mobile apps keeps rising as users become more accustomed to high-class apps. As a result, testing these apps is getting more challenging.
The following are the five most notable challenges in conducting mobile automation testing:
- Growth Of Devices Globally: More than 1.5 billion smartphones were purchased worldwide in 2021. One can understand the diversity of cellphones worldwide given the wide range of OS and the enormous number of devices and models. Evaluating a mobile app’s suitability for a particular OS and device presents a significant problem.
- Different Types Of Mobile Applications: Mobile apps are subcategorized into Native, Hybrid, and Web apps. The backend team has challenges with each type because they need unique configurations and testing methods. Consider mixing two or more of these types; doing so will make manifolds more complex.
- UI Variations Across Different OS: Testing mobile apps can be difficult because different operating systems have distinct user interfaces. Due to these UI variances, every program has a different usage style and layout. Therefore, testing different user interfaces with such metrics is complicated.
- Security Challenges: The most important issues to address relate to security. Although public-cloud-based apps and devices like LambdaTest, a mobile automation tool, may pose a security risk. Easy cache access, bad encryption, etc., are a few examples.
- Numerous Options: The number of mobile app automation testing technologies on the market is exploding. Using only free public-cloud tools could lead to security flaws. Additionally, selecting one or more expensive tools could be a mistake and hurt the wallet. Consequently, picking one that meets the requirements of a specific organization without a dedicated development team takes a lot of work.
Top Mobile Automation Testing Tools
Here are the top 10 automated testing solutions for mobile apps to help businesses cut expenses and excel at testing mobile apps.
1. Appium
One of the most well-liked open-source test automation frameworks is Appium. Both native and hybrid mobile apps can make use of it. Using the Selenium WebDriver protocol, Appium powers iOS, Android, and Windows apps.
All programming languages having Selenium client libraries, such as Java, C#, JavaScript with node.js, PHP, Ruby, Python, etc., are supported by Appium.
Benefits:
- Supports multiple languages
- Does not need access to the source code
- Has more extensive online support
- Can create cross-platform scripts
- Supports apps built on both iOS and Android2. Calabash
The Xamarin team created and maintained the open-source Calabash testing framework tool. Both iOS and Android apps can use it.
One may create and run automated acceptance tests for mobile applications by using this program. Calabash can communicate with mobile apps similar to Espresso or XCTest. Cucumber can be used with Calabash to write Ruby code.
Benefits:
- Using straightforward language akin to a test script
- Support all screen movements, including swiping, pinching, rotating, and tapping
- Support for cross-platform development
- Supports apps built on both iOS and Android
2. Robotium
Robotium is a framework for automated Android testing. It is available for both native and hybrid apps. It is the last item on our list of open-source tools. Robotium helps with comprehensive automation test scripts for Android applications that are simple to write.
Automation testers can create a functional, system, and user acceptability test cases with the aid of Robotium.
Benefits:
- Test scripts are concise and reliable
- With this tool, pre-installed app automation is feasible
- Compared to Appium, faster test automation is achieved because of run-time binding with GUI components
- Only works with Android apps
3. UI Automator
UI Automator is used for functional cross-app UI testing of installed apps. In order to conduct interactions on user and system apps, the UI Automator offers a set of APIs. The UI Automator is well suited for writing automated test scripts in the black box manner, where the test code is independent of the app code.
- Simple to understand and use
- UI Automator Viewer Library, a viewer for examining layout hierarchies, is maintained by the Google community
- Third-party commercial integration with cloud-based test management solutions is also available
- Only works with Android apps
4. SeeTest
One of the top app testing automation solutions in the market is SeeTest. It supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry applications. It offers client libraries for various programming languages, allowing you to create automation scripts in Java, C#, Perl, and Python.
Benefits:
- The same script can be used with multiple OSes with a few simple adjustments
- Support object-based and image recognition
- It offers a self-reporting system that includes screenshots and videos of the tests that were run
- Supports programs based on Windows, Android, and iOS
5. UFT Mobile
UFT Mobile offers additional support for testing mobile applications. This tool can generate mobile automation test scripts thanks to UFT mobile support. A test script created for iOS can likewise be applied to Android.
Benefits:
- Outstanding user interface
- Convenience is provided through support for record and playback capabilities.
- This automation tool can test mobile apps, online apps, and desktop apps
- Supports apps built for Android and iOS
6. Ranorex Studio
A Windows GUI test automation application called Ranorex Studio offers to test desktop, online, and mobile apps. Ranorex is capable of recording and replaying. Its user interface enables automated UI testing by capturing UI actions.
Benefits:
- Creating tests without code
- A user-friendly UI
- Amazing client service
- Supports apps built for Android and iOS
7. ACCELQ
ACCELQ provides AI-powered codeless test automation and management on a cloud-native platform. A unified platform for mobile, online, API, databases and packaged apps is offered by ACCELQ.
It is simple for testing teams without extensive programming knowledge because of its automation-first and codeless characteristics. With its first in the industry autonomics-based automation technology, ACCELQ enables enterprises to achieve 3x productivity and over 70% savings.
Benefits:
- Automating during a sprint to support DevOps and Agile
- Validation of business processes using a visual application model
- Based on artificial intelligence data planning and test case-generating automation
- Built-in capabilities for governance, version control, and test management
- Integrating CI/CD seamlessly and having natural traceability
8. testRigor
You can directly express tests as executable specs in plain English with the aid of testRigor. Users of all technical levels can create end-to-end tests that span the mobile, web, and API phases in a single test and can range in complexity. Test steps are stated at the end-user level instead of depending on implementation-specific features like XPaths or CSS Selectors.
Benefits:
- Unlimited test subjects and users
- The simplest method for learning automation
- Support for programming languages including C#, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, and Python
- Provides a variety of frameworks, including Angular, React, React Native, Android, iOS, and Flutter
- Supports a variety of testing methods, including API, audio, functional, and security testing
9. KIF
KIF is an objective C-based framework that is only used for iOS automated testing of mobile apps. It is a framework for mobile automation that seamlessly connects with XCTests. It can be used when businesspeople are not involved in writing or reading test specifications.
Benefits:
- KIF uses the accessibility labels on UI elements to access them
- Features a command line and CI that are remarkable
- Offers quite adequate support for gestures
- Supporting C-style programming
- Provides several frameworks, such as React Native Supports Functional Evaluation
Wrapping Up
In today’s mobile-driven market full of restless clients, a business must produce a product (mobile application) that is bug-free and meets consumers’ expectations. To assure quality, each mobile app must undergo a rigorous testing process by hiring mobile app developers.
However, selecting from many mobile testing solutions can be more time-consuming than the testing itself. You must ensure the tool you select meets your needs and is beneficial to you.
To save you some precious time, this blog post enlists the top 10 mobile automation testing tools and describes their capabilities and offerings.
Alternatively, you can also connect with a mobile app development company and let the experts handle the tasks related to automation testing.
