Top 5 Mobile App Testing Tools

January 24, 2017

Anastasiia Sokolinska

Chief Operating Office

Let's begin our list of top 5 mobile app testing tools:

TestFlight

TestFlight is useful tool for beta mobile app testing iOS apps. Using TestFlight you can easily invite any user to test your apps before release. You can invite up to 25 members to start testing beta version of your iOS app and get quick feedback. Team members are assigned in iTunes Connect. Each assigned user can test your beta application on up to 10 devices.

In addition to crash reports and advanced analytics TestFlight supports the in-app feedback feature which provides possibility for testers to give you feedback. The only disadvantage of this tool is that it is suitable only for iOS app.

As we mentioned above TestFlight can be used on max 10 devices and there is no limit to the amount of apps that are testing synchronously. You can test iOS apps on any iOS device (iPhone, iPad , iPod). But unfortunately you are not able to test Mac apps with the help of TestFlight.

After accepting your invitation you can download a beta version of the app that you are testing. The beta app will not be installed if you do not accept the email invitation (as a result you will not be listed as a tester). You can delete yourself as a tester in App Details page in TestFlight.

The beta version can replace the live version if you already have one.After downloading the beta app one should see an orange dot next to the name that identifies it as a beta. This tool will notify and you in case a new build is available. It also will give you instructions on where to pay attention.

To offer a feedback you tap the Provide Feedback button in the App Details view in TestFlight. After email is opened with pertinent app you are able to add either additional details or screenshots.

The beta period starts on the day it is released to tester and lasts for 60 days. The remaining number of days is shown below the Open button.

HockeyApp

It is a well known among developer tool that allows gathering information about mobile and desktop applications behaviour as on step of beta testing so as after release. You have full control under app access for each app. There are some really cool stuff about it:

Support major mobile and desktop platforms such as iOS, OSX, Android, Windows, Unity.

It has lots of metrics and you get insight of how users are using your app.

Provides informal crash reports that includes fingertips, like symbolicated stack traces and environment details.

Ability to store multiple applications which allows big projects keep all apps in 1 place.

Feedback messages are stored as a discussions. It enables you to engage with users and gain a deeper understanding of what users really want from your app. To manage all your work items in one place you can integrate the feedbacks with AlM tooling.

Talking about mobile app testing we also should take a look on mobile app testing services which provide you remote access to a wide range of different devices or emulators. The most usable one is Browserstack. This service focusing on cross browsing testing and offering you all major browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Edge with lots of versions of them. Recently more recently it also provides access to iOS/Android emulators. Using this tool you will have instant access to all popular mobile devices and web browsers.

Saucelabs

As we have mentioned in one of our articles emulators and simulators are not the best option for testing on later stages. In this case we suggest you SauceLabs

Unlike the Browserstack Saucelabs provide remote access to over than 700 different browser platform, operating system and device combinations on real devices. But one is similar between two of them - they are very good suitable both for mobile, web automation and manual testing. The last one provides test infrastructure for automated testing of desktop and mobile applications using Selenium, Appium and JavaScript unit testing frameworks.

Silk Mobile

This tool is for mobile app performance testing enables you to create and run the tests on devices that are connected to a PC. It includes a recorder so your tests can be created extra quickly. One more nice feature is that tests can run directly from mobile device.

Visual action and verification commands can be used to add logic to the test scripts, without writing a single line of code.

It runs really fast, robust and repeatable automation scripts across mobile devices, At the same time it capture users interaction. Silk Mobile support multi-touch, swipe, drag & drop, zoom, scrolling. Silk Mobile advanced scripting enables you to execute scripts in parallel across mobile devices. So not only are you able to execute scripts in sequence, Multiple devices can be configured directly to single test execution machine.