11 Best Automation Tools for Testing Android Applications (Android App Testing Tools)

List of the Best Android Application Testing Tools for your reference:

Nowadays automated tests are used during almost every testing process. This is not surprising, as properly organized automated testing greatly reduces the time needed for a testing process, and excludes errors and omissions in test execution caused by a human factor.

There is a wide choice of tools for automation. Some of them are free, some are rather expensive. Some automation tools were created years ago; some have just appeared on the market. Each tool is unique and possesses certain characteristics.

A wide choice of available automation tools makes it difficult to select the most suitable ones for a project. The problem is that hardly any of the existing tools fully corresponds to project requirements.

In Order to Make Automated Tests Effective and Profitable One Should:

• Research the software product under test and the project;
• Clearly, determine what tests are to be automated;
• Formulate requirements for the automated tests and the tools for automation;
• Study at least several available and more or less suitable tools for automation;
• Select the most suitable one or more tools based on the research;
• Discuss the chosen automation tools with other project parties, explain the choice, and get their approval;
• Proceed to test automation.

Such an approach and sequence of steps would be approved by most quality assurance experts.

Many different kinds of computers have appeared recently, their appearance started the rapid development of software products. The most amazing is the evolution of mobile devices; they significantly differ from common personal computers in characteristics, ways, and conditions of interaction with them.

Consequently, smartphones and tablets require special mobile applications that differ from desktop ones.

The operating system of most personal computers is Windows. Among popular mobile operating systems are Android, Apple iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone, Symbian, and others.

Also, read => Beginner’s Guide to Mobile Application Testing

Top Android Testing Tools

Let’s explore modern tools for automated testing of applications supported on one of the most widespread mobile operating systems – Android.

Here is the list of the best Android Application Testing tools:

1. TestComplete
2. BrowserStack
3. Kobiton
4. testRigor
5. BitBar
6. Appium
7. Selendroid
8. Calabash
9. Robotium
10. MonkeyRunner
11. Ranorex
12. UI Automator
13. Experitest

Let’s see more details about these tools.

#1) TestComplete

TestComplete offers mobile app test automation for any device and operating system. Delivers the quality of your application with incredible scale and efficiency. Easy to use for both technical and non-technical users with script or scriptless testing.

Key Features:

• Connects to your local Appium server or gives you on-demand access to 100s of the latest devices on a self-hosted or public cloud.
• Code or codeless test creation: use record & playback, or script in your choice of a modern language (including JavaScript, Python, and VBScript).
• TestComplete supports all major frameworks including React Native, Flutter, SwiftUI, and Xamarin.
• Superior object recognition, using machine learning and AI, identifies complex objects.
• Run functional UI tests in parallel in the cloud or on your local machine for continuous testing and continuous delivery.
• Integrates tightly with the tools in your ecosystems, such as CI/CD, test management, issue tracking, and version control, giving you a complete testing lifecycle.

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#2) BrowserStack

BrowserStack is a software testing platform that powers over two million tests every day across 15 global data centers. Their cloud-based test infrastructure enables over 50,000 customers to deliver software in less time by moving testing to their Cloud.

BrowserStack makes testing on real Android Devices easy. With their Mobile App Testing tools: App Live and App Automate, one can perform Manual and Automation tests on Android Applications under real user conditions. App Live allows users to test their apps manually on the Android Devices of their choice, while App Automate enables Test Automation to accelerate and scale mobile app testing.

BrowserStack costs $29/user/month and offers a free trial.

Key Features:

• Integration with major CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI, Circle CI, Bamboo, Azure, TeamCity, and Fastlane.
• Supports frameworks such as Appium, Cypress, XCUITest, EarlGrey, Selendroid, and Espresso.
• Secured Real Device Cloud consists of all major Android Devices for wider coverage solving the problem of Android Fragmentation.
• Allows testing Applications in a secure Staging environment with BrowserStack Local.
• Features like GeoLocation Testing and Network Throttling help identify all the bottlenecks and make debugging easier.
• Test your website and mobile apps on real devices without the hassle of maintaining device labs. Instant, browser-based access to the latest and most popular Android devices.
• Choose from our exhaustive range of Android devices like Pixel, Galaxy, etc. running on Snow Cone (12), 11, 10, Pie (9.0), Oreo (8.0), Nougat (7.1, 7.0), Marshmallow (6.0), Lollipop (5.0, 5.1), Kitkat (4.4, 4.3), etc.
• Debug your Android apps & websites instantly using device logs, browser console and network logs, crash logs, video recordings, and screenshots for every test you run.
• Test your native, hybrid, and mobile apps in internal dev and staging environments by utilizing the secure, encrypted BrowserStack tunnel. No set-up is required.
• Easily Integrate BrowserStack with Android test automation frameworks like Espresso, Appium, etc. to run your automated Android tests.
• Release Android builds faster by running tests concurrently across devices. Reduce test execution time by more than 10x using parallel tests on the BrowserStack device cloud.

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#3) Kobiton

Kobiton is a mobile device testing platform with functional, visual, and performance testing capabilities on real devices. It will let you perform the testing on real devices in the cloud or on-premises. With the help of this tool, you can test on real devices from your IDE.

Kobiton is the most comprehensive real device testing platform with manual testing, automated testing, and scriptless automation capabilities and features.

Further Reading => Simple and Easy Ways to Start Automation Tests

Key Features:

• With Kobiton’s Session Explorer, it will be easier to zoom into the test failures.
• It can be integrated into your DevOps CI/CD.
• You will be able to test applications on the latest Android and iOS devices.
• Device Lab management will let you connect with devices in the cloud, your local on-premises devices as well as on-desk devices.
• It will allow you to create automated test scripts from manual tests which are executable on multiple devices simultaneously.
• For scripting, it provides full support for Appium, Selenium, XCUI, Expresso, etc.

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#4) testRigor

testRigor is the testing system chosen by leading app developers to test Android and iOS applications. testRigor takes a functional approach to testing your apps by referencing the actual user input instead of the underlying codebase. In addition, they are the only company solving the test maintenance problem.

testRigor made the list for its “No Code” test automation tool because it allows manual testers with NO technical knowledge of device architecture or coding the ability to create complex test automation with plain English test cases.

Speed up your test case execution by running multiple devices in parallel. Then sit back and review your bug reports and screenshots.

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#5) BitBar

BitBar is a testing platform for both mobile and web applications to perform manual and automated tests on real devices. Instantly access the real device cloud and test what your customers use.

Features:

• BitBar provides unlimited device concurrency that will let you run any number of automated mobile tests on Android and iOS devices at the same time.
• For manual testing, the platform will let you remotely control browsers and devices. This will help with troubleshooting the issues reported by the customer.
• It supports all languages and any native mobile test automation framework.

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#6) Appium Android Automation Framework

It’s a framework for creating automated tests for iOS and Android. It is a free tool. It supports Android versions from 2.3 and later. Appium utilizes the WebDriver interface for tests running. It supports many programming languages, such as Java, C#, Ruby, and others which are in the WebDriver library.

It can control Safari and Chrome on mobile devices. This allows testing of mobile websites using Appium and these browsers.

But some automated test engineers complain that it provides poor, insufficient reports. Also, its weakness is reduced XPath support on mobile devices.

Website: Appium

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#7) Selendroid

This test automation framework is for hybrid Android apps and mobile web. It supports Windows, Mac, and Linux OS. It supports test writing with Selenium 2 client API. For emulators and real devices, Selendroid is useful. To make it scalable and a platform for parallel testing, integration with Selenium Grid is allowed. It has an extension to help you.

Features:

• Selendroid is compatible with JSON Wire Protocol.
• It has a built-in Android driver web view app to test the mobile web.
• It will allow you to find UI elements through different locator types.
• Hot plugging of hardware devices is supported by Selendroid. Many more such features are included in Selendroid.

Website: Selendroid

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#8) Calabash

This automation testing framework is to perform acceptance tests for Android and iOS apps. It can be used by everyone i.e. mobile developers as well as the ones who don’t know coding skills. The tool enables automatic UI interactions within an application like inputting text and validating responses.

Calabash contains libraries. With the help of that, test code will be able to programmatically interact with native and hybrid apps.

Features:

• Calabash provides a facility to allow you to configure tests to run on hundreds of Android and iOS devices.
• It provides APIs that have functionalities to run native apps on touch screen devices.
• It provides access to the Xamarin test cloud.
• It supports cucumber.
• Support for cucumber automation will let you write the tests in plain English.

Website: Calabash

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#9) Robotium Android Testing Tool

Robotium is one of the first and most frequently utilized automated testing tools for software supported on Android.

Robotium is a free Android UI testing tool. It is suitable for test automation for different Android versions and sub-versions. Software developers often describe it as Selenium for Android. Tests created by Robotium are written in Java. In fact, Robotium is a library for unit tests.

But it takes much time and effort to create tests by means of Robotium, as one must work with the program source code in order to automate tests. The tool is also unsuitable for interaction with system software; it cannot lock and unlock a smartphone or a tablet.

There is no Record and Play function in Robotium, and it does not provide screenshots.

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#10) MonkeyRunner Android App Testing

MonkeyRunner is one of the popular Android Testing tools used for automating functional tests for Android software.

This tool is more low-level than Robotium. One does not have to deal with the source code in order to automate tests. The tests are written in Python, one may use a recording tool for creating tests.

MonkeyRunner can run tests on real devices connected to a PC or emulators. The tool has an API that allows it to control a smartphone, a tablet, or an emulator from outside of Android code.

A significant disadvantage of the mobile app testing tool is that it is necessary to write scripts for each device. Another problem with MonkeyRunner is that the tests require adjustments each time when the user interface of the tested program is changed.

Website: MonkeyRunner

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#11) Ranorex Android Application Testing Tool

Ranorex is a good tool for test automation not only for the latest but also for early versions and sub-versions of Android, beginning from Android 2.2.

One of the Ranorex advantages is its detailed reports with screenshots. It can connect a smartphone or a tablet to the Internet via WiFi.

An automated test engineer can elaborate data-driven tests, excluding XML data format, by means of this Android tool. Ranorex Studio enables an automated test engineer to create tests easily, by just clicking the mouse. It allows for elaborating additional program modules. The modules may be utilized during late development cycles for more complex test scenarios.

It is a commercial mobile application tool; its license price is 1990 EUR. Ranorex searches elements rather slowly; it takes up to 30 seconds to perform such an operation. One must instrument APK files for Ranorex. Otherwise, it is impossible to automate tests by means of this tool, as it works only with instrumented APK files.

Ranorex is frequently utilized for creation tests for early Android versions.

Website: Ranorex

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#12) UI Automator For Android Test Automation

This tool has been recently elaborated on by Google. It supports Android versions beginning from 4.1. One should select another Android app testing tool in order to automate tests for earlier versions. UI Automator is able to interact with all kinds of software products for Android, including system applications. This enables UI Automator to lock and unlock a smartphone or a tablet.

Scripts created by means of this tool can be executed on many different Android platforms. It allows reproducing complex sequences of user actions.

UI Automator also can utilize external buttons of a device, such as buttons for going back, volume regulation, and turning on and off the device.

It can be integrated with a testing framework TestNG. In this case, UI Automator can generate informative and detailed reports, similar to reports generated by Ranorex. This tool also searches elements very fast.

Software testing experts find UI Automator good for quality mobile application testing on many Android platforms. It is one of the best tools for Android applications, as it is elaborated by Google, especially for this operating system.

Usually, about 80% of new software bugs reproduce on all the supported platforms. So, one may perform mobile testing on one of the widely used platforms and discover up to 80% of defects. The rest 20% will be found on all the other platforms. That means that in most cases it is better to test software products thoroughly on fewer platforms than hastily on numerous.

At present Android 4.1 is installed on about 66% of all devices using the Android operating system. That is why many automated test engineers often decide that UI Automator is the most suitable solution.

Website: UI Automator

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#13) Experitest

Accelerate Mobile testing cycles and increase the quality of your releases with high-volume automated android testing

• Create & execute hundreds of automated tests in parallel on real Android devices in the cloud
• Easily create your first Appium test
• Run advanced mobile test automation directly from your IDE
• Automate any type of application, gesture, and scenario
• Integrate with your CI/CD tools and workflow
• Automated mobile testing under real-life conditions
• Integrate into any IDE, testing framework & CI for rapid application delivery
• Access visual test reports and advanced analytics

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#14) 21 – AI Test Creation and Analytics for Android

21 is a sophisticated, self-learning test automation and analytics platform for Android applications.

21 Offers:

• Fast and intelligent authoring – AI that pre-builds tests with a full-featured editor for customizing your tests
• Results you trust – Seamless algorithmic locators system to support automated tests across native, React, Cordova, Flutter, Ionic, and other frameworks. No locators are needed.
• Eliminate maintenance and flaky results – Self-learning maintenance autonomously updates tests and assures your team can focus on developing new features while relying on test results.
• Release with confidence – Production integration uncovers the data needed to close the feedback loop, and analyze actual coverage. Own your quality gate and release it with data.

Recommended reading =>> 21Labs Automation Testing Tool Review

21 is fully SaaS, and requires no installation or devices to create or execute tests. We offer access to dozens of devices seamlessly.

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Conclusion

Test automation is a complex task. It requires thorough preparation and research. One should also keep up with all the novelties in information technology, applications, and test automation tools. All this knowledge is necessary for creating the most effective tests.

About the Author: This is a guest post by Oleg Prosyanik, a Senior Automated Test Engineer of QATestLab, a leading Ukrainian company offering the full range of software testing services. 

In our next article in the series, we will discuss Mobile APP Security Testing Tools.