21Labs Automation Testing Tool For Mobile: Hands-on Review

This is a comprehensive hands-on review of the 21Labs Automation Testing Tool for Android and iOS app testing and its features: 

Are you trying to automate your mobile testing, but the test maintenance is a big hurdle in the process?  Or, did you go back to manual testing because it’s really difficult to create reliable & stable automated tests for mobile applications, and also takes several months of effort?

21Labs Automation Testing Tool for Mobile

Well, you don’t need to worry about these mobile automation challenges anymore, as we are going to introduce you to an amazing mobile test automation tool–‘21 labs’ which lets you create highly reliable and stable automated tests really quickly, with no actual devices and without writing any script.

With the constant arrival of software sophistication and rapid increase in smartphone usage around the world, mobile automation testing has become much more important because it reduces the cost and time to market, at the same time ensures quality and a smooth experience for customers.

Amid the rising appeal of automation in the software industry, finding the right automation testing tool is tough. 21 tool is just the right tool for all your mobile automation testing needs.

What Is 21Labs Automation Tool

21Labs is a self-learning AI-based mobile automation testing tool for Android and iOS apps. It helps greatly with your mobile testing efforts and allows you to release faster without compromising on quality. It offers AI-guided authoring that helps you create test scenarios very quickly in just a few clicks.

Not only this, but the tool also includes a mechanism for self-maintenance of tests and a way to measure real test coverage. It offers continuous testing for mobile phones with no devices.

OS Support: It supports Android and iOS operating systems. Versions vary between real devices and emulators, and there is a wide range of devices and OS versions.

Pricing: 21labs offers affordable pricing plans with three available categories to choose from–Free version, Base version, and Pro version.

As the name says, for the free version, you do not need to pay anything. It will allow a very limited number of tests per day with 1 project, 1 user, and 1 device only. For the Base and Pro version’s pricing, which comes with additional & premium features, you will need to contact the 21labs team.

Is a Free Trial available? – Yes, a 14-day free trial is available with no credit card needed.

Unique Features of 21 Tool

In this section, we will explore the unique features of 21Labs that give this tool an edge over other similar automation tools available in the market.

The features are as follows:

1) Time To Value

With 21Labs, it only takes minutes from the time you sign up to run tests!

Generally, if you need to start a mobile automation project, then you need to spend a couple of months setting up the framework, the execution infrastructure, etc. However, with 21Labs, you don’t need to do any setup. You just need to upload the apk file of your application so you can immediately start testing.

21Labs is pre-integrated with devices and emulators. So, you do not need to spend months and weeks setting up the framework and connecting with different cloud providers.

2) Manage Locators Autonomously

21Labs’ locator mechanism is just outstanding. Its sophisticated locator system can handle any framework and can autonomously pick the right locator, even with dynamic data and data with no unique IDs. This means it is also flexible enough to self-heal to changes in the application.

You don’t need to specify locators manually.

The 21 automation tool is not dependent upon unique IDs or XPaths. It considers 8 unique attributes to identify objects.

When a user points to an element or clicks on it, beneath the lid, 21 looks for unique attributes like Resource ID, Class Name, Content Description, Accessibility ID, etc. If unique IDs are found, it saves them automatically and uses them during the run time.

When there are no IDs or no unique IDs, which is very likely the case with mobile applications, the 21 tool employs some fallback mechanisms.

It can be calculating the bounds of the elements, relative position on the screen, and keeping track of parents, siblings, and children of the element to figure out a unique pattern. Still, if the element is non-discoverable, then it uses computer vision to find the element.

So, unlike other automation tools with 21labs, you do not need to manage locators or ask your developers to manually plug in any test IDs into the elements. The development frameworks are agnostic. 21 automatically takes care of locators and allows you to just focus on your test.

21Labs experience is the same across Flutter, React Native, Ionic, hybrid and native apps.

3) Wide Set of Actions

Ranging from asserting text, API calls, and fingerprints to initiating calls & SMS messages, you can easily and quickly add a lot of actions to your test.

It also gives you the flexibility to write customized code to support JS-based custom actions.

4) AI-Based Learning of Your App

From every test that you create, 21tool learns the structure of the application, particularly the functionality of each screen and navigation. It internally models the application into a graph of screens and images.

This is a self-learning graph that evolves with each update. For instance, if you add any screen between two screens or delete any screen, then 21 learns it on its own.

This allows 21 automation tools to:

• Pre-build the tests. You just need to visually choose the path that you want to test, and the 21 tool auto-populates the actions. It learns the actions from the other tests that you have created.

It also works the other way round i.e., if you click on the action then it will auto-populate on the next screen. All the tests are totally customizable. You can add assertions, alter test data, and reorganize the flow.

• Makes the tests stable.
• Since you have all the screens in the system, so even if it’s a path that you haven’t navigated earlier, then you can essentially choose to add those screens and perform actions between them.

• Increase the responsiveness of the tests, because you do not need to connect to actual devices and you do not need to use a recorder where things like screen loading, etc. takes up a lot of time.

5) Pre-Integrated With an Array of Mobile Devices and Emulators

You can choose to run the same test on different mobile devices, different screen resolutions, etc. The same test works well across different devices. You do not need to change anything in your test to make it run on a different device.

6) Integrations with Device Lab

The 21 automation tool uses standard Appium and runs on any device lab.

If you are using a third-party device lab like Perfecto, Sauce Labs, etc., then you can simply set up that provider under Test Execution, plugin your credentials, and you are good to go.

This saves months that you would otherwise have spent integrating with the device lab provider.

7) Auto Test Maintenance

This is yet another super cool feature of the 21 tool, which reduces up to 90% of your test maintenance time. Whenever you change an existing test (for example, add a screen in the flow), 21 deeply analyzes that change and learns from it.

By doing impact analysis, it will identify other tests having a similar pattern and will ask you if you want to apply the changes to those tests.

You can apply changes to all tests in one go as a bulk action or select some of the tests to which you want to apply changes. For all selected tests, the changes will auto-apply.

You can also apply the changes tentatively. Here, it will show a maintenance icon corresponding to those tests, and also give you the option to accept or decline the change.

8) Build-in Capability to Integrate Into CI Pipelines

We just need a few lines of code for 21 to integrate with the CI pipeline and the integration happens in a jiffy.

This tool provides a simple shell syntax through which you can upload new builds and execute suites from any CI server. 21 send the results back into your CI in a JUnit format and also in an email.

9) Sophisticated Root Cause Analysis

On real mobile devices, you might experience lots of pop-ups and this is often a challenge with automated mobile tests, causing them to fail.

Whenever a test fails, 21 autonomously look at the inventory of system messages and detect if the test fails due to a pop-up. If yes, then try to disable the pop-up and revert back to the last action and execute it again.

10) Dashboard

The 21 tool gives very useful information on the dashboard such as total tests present for your application, total test runs, success rate, coverage index, build-wise pass/fail, etc.

11) Rich Reporting

Report bugs with a single click as this tool offers rich reporting features including screenshots, video recordings, Appium logs and Logcat, steps to reproduce a bug, etc. All of these features help with quick troubleshooting.

It can also be easily integrated with project management like JIRA, etc. where you can directly report the bug.

12) Leverages Production Data to Enrich Tests

21 is not just a plain testing tool, it gives you the ability to enable DevOps. The 21 tool can leverage production data to make testing much more autonomous. With just a few minutes of effort as opposed to hours and days, you can take your testing to the next level by using production data, giving you greater confidence to release.

Measure the coverage: 21 is integrated with analytics tools such as Segment, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and NumPy and it overlays what the users are doing in production on top of what you are testing.

You can essentially identify which flows are more frequent and which are higher in traffic. It also highlights the areas of the application that you are not testing.

This also helps in doing impact analysis when a test fails, as you get to know the percentage of users that will be impacted when a certain flow breaks.

Pros and Cons of 21 Automation Tool

Pros:

• No device or pre-setup is required.
• AI-based authoring helps you create tests really quickly.
• A smart locator system ensures that elements are found even when they get changed.
• Support frameworks that have no unique ID.
• Highly interactive User Interface–it takes less than five minutes from sign-up to running your first test.
• Up to 90% reduced cost with auto-pilot mode for test maintenance.
• Supports parallel test execution on multiple devices.
• Leverages production data for testing and thus gives greater release confidence.
• Cuts time to resolution because of the rich reporting features.
• Powerful integrations: 21 tools is integrated with devices, device labs, reporting tools, CI pipelines, and production analytics tools.
• Cuts down the overall time of mobile test automation from months to a few days.
• Quick troubleshooting with rich bug reporting features.
• Affordable pricing plans.
• Free demo and free trial available.

Cons:

• There are no such limitations with this tool.

Conclusion

21Labs makes your mobile automation journey smooth and quick. It is super easy to use. With its AI-based authoring and interactive UI, it does not require you to write any scripts, yet gives you full flexibility and customization options. The tests that you create with 21 labs are highly stable and reliable because of their sophisticated locator system.

With its unique features, this tool beautifully overcomes the challenges of mobile automation like lengthy release cycles, dealing with multiple development frameworks, not being able to find object trees for certain elements, difficult & costly maintenance of tests, etc.

The best fact about the 21 automation tool is that it is pre-integrated with devices and emulators, so you don’t need real devices to begin testing. The tool has a free trial as well as a free version available so you can try and have some hands-on experience before purchasing the tool.

=> So, sign up here, upload your app, and start testing with an AI-based continuous testing tool from 21 labs!

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