With thousands of new apps being submitted to the Apple Store and Google Play daily, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. However, to make your app successful, you must ensure it’s as reliable as possible.

The best way to ensure your app doesn’t get ripped apart by critics — or worse, crash and burn in the App Store — is to test it thoroughly before releasing it. But there are so many Testing tools out there.

How do you know which one to use?

And how should you approach the testing process itself?

This complete guide to iOS app testing will give you all the information you need to ensure that your apps are tested thoroughly and appropriately. Thus, your customers will have the best experience possible using them.

Let’s start with the first thing first!

Why is iOS App Testing Important?

Unfortunately, sometimes apps don’t perform as they should. For example, have you ever faced a situation where your app’s users complained that it crashed? Or where one of your app features doesn’t work as expected?

As an enterprise owner, you must ensure high-quality standards and continuous improvement to ensure your apps run at peak performance. Notably, testing applications is so crucial that enterprises set aside a significant chunk of the budget for dedicated testing procedures.

The infographic below offers details, have a look:

Source: Statista — Testing Budget

Following are some of the significant aspects that make Ios App Testing critical before its release:

• The rising number of iOS users: Backlink says an estimated 1 billion users worldwide prefer iPhones over other smartphones. Your app must work without flaws to succeed with such a vast user base.
• High competition in Apple’s app store: With more than 2 million apps available on Apple’s app store, your app has to stand out for you to get noticed by potential customers.
• Strict QA by the iOS platform: Apple has stringent quality assurance standards for apps submitted on their app store. In fact, Apple holds a reputation for rejecting over 80% of all apps submitted on their app store!
• Ensuring high performance: A study shows that over 80% of users expect apps to load in less than 3 seconds! If your app takes longer, you can be sure users will uninstall it sooner or later.
• Maintain a good first impression: In today’s competitive world, you must make sure that your app stands out from other apps in terms of design, functionality, and user experience. Therefore, you must test your app thoroughly before releasing it on Apple’s app store. If your app is slow or crashes frequently, users will abandon it immediately!

Types of iOS App Testing

There are diverse approaches you can take when testing your app. While there’s no one right way to conduct your testing, you need to decide which type of test is right for your project.

In broad classification, developers can do iOS App Testing in the following two ways:

Manual Testing: Professional testers check the app for bugs and issues in manual testing. Manual testing is excellent for projects with limited resources or complicated codebases. It is a great way to catch bugs that automated tests can’t detect. But it’s time-consuming and expensive.

Automation Testing: It refers to running tests on an app without human interaction and is a great way to catch simple bugs in your codebase. Automation testing is ideal for projects with significant resources and large teams as it ensures rapid testing cycles and consistent results across all testers.

Top 5 iOS App Testing Methods

Source: Google Trends

Several standard methods of testing a mobile app can be used as a starting point for your tests. Some of the notable ones are:

#1. Unit Test: Under this method, programmers check for bugs in individual functions of an app without actually launching it. It is an excellent way to ensure that each part of your app works as expected before you test how they work together.

#2. Integration Test: It checks how two or more parts of an app work together. This is done by launching a fully functioning app and interacting with it through its interface.

#3. Component Test: It is similar to an integration test but tests a component instead of an app as a whole. This type of testing is used when you want to check how members interact with each other without actually launching an app.

#4. Performance Test: This test checks how an app responds under pressure. It includes checking how it performs when there are a lot of users or if a lot of data is accessed simultaneously.

#5. E2E Test: This test checks how an app works from start to finish by simulating a user’s interaction with it. It is similar to performance testing but has a broader scope as it also tests how an app responds when it is under pressure in different situations such as network failure or low battery power.

These are some of the reliable testing methods used by industry leaders. Performing them requires time and effort from developers and testers. You can hire iOS app developers to help you with these tests as they are experts in their field.

It’s also worth mentioning that other types of testing aren’t discussed here, such as security or accessibility testing. Still, we won’t discuss those here since they don’t apply to all businesses. So instead, let’s focus on the frameworks you can trust for iOS app testing.

Frameworks You can Leverage for iOS App Testing:

Application frameworks are one of the best ways to handle app testing when you are in a hurry or looking to achieve more in less time. Furthermore, users thoroughly vetted frameworks across all platforms, leading to fewer efforts.

Some of the standard iOS app testing frameworks are:

Appium: Appium is an open-source tool that allows you to test native or hybrid apps on real devices or emulators. It’s compatible with all platforms (iOS, Android, etc.) and supports native and hybrid apps. You can use it with any programming language.

This framework allows the testers to check for functional and performance issues. Furthermore, since it works across multiple platforms, you don’t have to worry about writing separate tests for each forum.

KIF: KIF is a functional testing framework for iOS apps. It’s built on top of Apple’s XCTest framework and allows programmers to test the app in both manual as well as in an automated way.

KIF stands for Keep It Functional, which sums up its main goal well. Since it’s built on XCTest, programmers don’t have to worry about writing new tests from scratch — it will be easy to convert existing tests into KIF format.

OCMock: It is an excellent framework for mocking test data. This framework allows you to mock various app attributes to make your tests look like actual users interacting with your app. It’s used by many CocoaPods, so you can easily use it with other testing frameworks. What’s more, it supports both Objective-C and Swift. It requires Objective-C or Swift programming skills.

EarlGrey: This iOS app testing framework allows developers to write high-level tests for your app. It’s compatible with Objective-C or Swift. What’s more, it can be used with any testing framework. This framework uses XCTest as its base, so you don’t have to worry about writing separate tests from scratch. You can also use it with other frameworks if you want to.

Detox: This is an end-to-end testing framework for iOS apps. It allows you to test your app from a user’s perspective. It uses a human-readable language called Gherkin (similar to natural language) that lets you quickly write automated tests for your app. What’s more, it supports both Objective-C and Swift.

So, Who should test your app?

There are many options — in-house teams, third-party companies, partners that specialize in mobile testing…your call. Regardless of who you choose to test your app, ensure they have experience working with native and hybrid applications before sending them your code.

Also, make sure you know what they’re going to do, like:

Test each screen — This is a common practice in mobile application testing where testers check each screen of an application and ensure that it performs as expected.

Your server — The servers on which your applications run should be capable of handling all of your users simultaneously without any lags or crashes.

QA — Quality Assurance (QA) is another essential part of mobile application testing. The QA team’s job is to test if your app has any issues related to bugs or crashes in your app code. If they find any issues, you should try fixing them as soon as possible because if users find a bug or crash, it will negatively impact your overall user experience.

Beta Tests: It refers to testing your app with a group of users who are not part of your core target audience. It helps you get feedback from real-world users about how they feel about using your app. You can also use their feedback to make changes to your app before it is released for public use.

There are some industry standards for app testing at present. An iOS app development company uses these standards as a benchmark to judge if your app is ready for release or not.

iOS App Testing: A Complete Guide(Methods, Tools, & More) was originally published in Enlear Academy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.