There are so many mobile testing tools out there to choose from, it’s difficult to make up one’s mind. You end up starting too many trials and in the end, you may be even more confused about what tools to use. So here are 10 tools that every mobile tester should know.
Tools for tracking, hosting and continuous integration
Jira
Jira is a software development tool developed for agile environments. It will help your team mainly to plan, track and release your product, as well as report the performance of your software.
Pros:
You can connect to Github or Bitbucket for end-to-end traceability, from backlog to deployment
Many add-ons to fit any use cases
Integration with all the tools you are already using – thanks to its robust set of API
Customizable workflows to match exactly your team’s requirements and support agile processes
Github
GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service for your projects that offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git topping it with its own features. GitHub has a Web-based graphical interface as well as a desktop one and a mobile integration. It also provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management and wikis for every project.
Pros:
It is a very versatile tool, ideally used for working on projects of any size and it’s great for distributed teams
Create a backup of your work instead on saving the code on a desktop or on a corporate server.
Get started quickly with Github pages, without worrying about setting up hosting or DNS.
Github also offers both private and public repos, with easy collaboration between teams (even from different organisations)
Jenkins
Jenkins is an open source tool written in Java that provides continuous integration services for software development. It is a server-based system running in a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat. It supports SCM tools and can execute Apache Ant and Apache Maven based projects as well as arbitrary shell scripts and Windows batch commands. It is the leading open source automation server and it provides hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying and automating any project.
Pros:
Builds can be started by various means and they can be triggered by:
Manually – with one click,
Commit in a version control system,
Scheduling via a cron-like mechanism,
Building when other builds have completed, requesting a specific build URL.
Mobile testing tools for test automation
Selenium
Selenium is an open source portable software testing framework for web applications that comprises a series of tools. It uses the WebDriver protocol and it helps you to automate boring web-based administration tasks. It also provides a test domain-specific language (Selenese) to write tests in a number of popular programming languages, so as mobile tester you don’t need to learn one more language. You can also use Selenium for mobile web app testing, but if you want to use something more mobile-specific, you should use Appium.
Pros:
Write tests in you favourite language like Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, C#
It’s an open source and low cost tool
It’s specific for web applications
It is used for browser compatibility testing and it is useful for comprehensive testing
It is also very easy to integrate in your testing ecosystem
Appium
Appium is an open source cross-platform test automation framework to use with native, hybrid and mobile web apps. It drives iOS and Android apps using the WebDriver JSON Wire Protocol. It’s a black-box testing tool, so the source code of the application is not needed, neither for modification nor for gathering information like UI element IDs or similar.The idea behind Appium is that testing native apps shouldn’t require including an SDK or recompiling the app. You can use test practices, frameworks and tools of your choice.
Pros:
Appium is an open source cross-platform mobile test automation framework
It’s meant to use with native, hybrid and mobile web apps
It’s based on Selenium
The underlying native platform-specific automation tools are used to interact with the application’s UI.
Supports many among the major programming languages (Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, C#…). As long as there is an Appium Driver for a language, you can write your test script in that language.
Espresso
Espresso is an open source mobile testing automation framework for native Android apps developed by Google. There are two .apk files involved: there is the app APK and then there is the test APK. The executed test .apk is synchronised by the framework with the Android UI thread.Espresso has a small, predictable, easy to learn API and it is built on top of the Android instrumentation framework. This framework allows white-box tests written in Java, using the Hamcrest matchers to simplify the reading and writing of test scripts.
Pros:
Open source mobile testing automation framework for native Android apps
Allows white-box testing
Written in Java
Uses Hamcrest matchers.
Robotium
Robotium is an open source mobile testing automation framework for native and hybrid Android apps. With Robotium it is very easy to write powerful and robust automatic black-box UI tests for Android apps: you just need the .apk file, no source code is needed. Mobile testers can also run gray-box tests if the source code is available. It provides simple API to write UI automation scripts. Robotium is in fact one of the most commonly used automated UI testing framework.
Pros:
Open source mobile testing framework for native and hybrid Android apps
It writes robust automatic black-box UI tests – no source code needed
Simple API to write scripts
Tools for coding
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA is a Java integrated development environment (IDE) for developing computer software. It is developed by JetBrains and is available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition and in a proprietary commercial edition.
Pros:
Coding assistance: IntelliJ IDEA analyzes your code, looking for connections between symbols across all project files and languages. Using this information it provides in depth coding assistance, quick navigation, clever error analysis, and, of course, refactorings.
Developers ergonomics: IntelliJ IDEA is built on a principle that every minute a developer spends in the flow is a good minute, and things that break developers out of that flow are bad and should be avoided.
Built-in developer tools: to streamline your workflow, IntelliJ IDEA offers an unbeatable toolset right from the first start: decompiler, bytecode viewer, FTP and many more.
Polyglot experience: In addition to Java, IntelliJ IDEA offers first-class support for top JVM and non-JVM frameworks and languages out of the box.
Tools to spawn software containers
Docker
Docker is an open-source project that automates the deployment of applications inside software containers. “Docker containers wrap up a piece of software in a complete filesystem that contains everything it needs to run: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries – anything you can install on a server. This guarantees that it will always run the same, regardless of the environment it is running in.”
Pros:
Lightweight containers that enable you to start different applications with less resources
Very cloud-friendly
Rapid application deployment
Tools for communication
Slack
Slack is a very useful cloud-based team collaboration tool: you can have channels, private channels and direct messages to one or more people. Calls are also available since recently. We at TestObject use this tool all the time – it’s way better than using emails. Files are stored and searchable, which is very handy when you are not in front of a computer.
Pros:
You can integrate bots to get updates from various web apps, so that you don’t have to visit the single pages
You can switch on and off notifications for different channels and you can set a downtime
Youtube videos are embedded
Emoji support: you don’t actually have to search for emojis, you can just type them
As mobile tester, have you ever thought about testing in the cloud?
We have the right mobile testing tool for that too!
TestObject
TestObject is a leading mobile testing provider, offering a comprehensive cloud based platform for automated and manual testing. TestObject’s technology leverages hundreds of real mobile devices and open source testing frameworks. It allows app developers and QA teams to shorten their product release cycles through a sustainable testing environment.
Hundreds of customers like Bosch, Philips, Sixt, Nestlé and Citrix trust in TestObject’s Mobile Quality Assurance Solutions.
