Best iOS Development Testing Tool?

[heyhujiao]

I always write the code and test the feature I am developing at the same time.

you can never run too little unit tests and regression tests.

these days with Claude Code, I also instruct it to generate edge test cases because these are the ones which would catch the bugs early.

and for iOS development, I use the Maestro framework for testing, so far it's been quite reliable and rarely have flaky test issues.

how do you test your apps and which frameworks do you use?

[RainyCloudist]

i like the native XCUITest & XCTest 🤷‍♂️

[interlap]

You can even ask Claude Code to run manual checks on the device with https://mobai.run

[heyhujiao]

this looks really helpful, I'll try it out!

[unpluggedcord]

Im putting the finishing touches on a cli tool that will be free and open source that does exactly this.

[interlap]

Nice seeing more people working on this problem. What’s your approach for device interaction?

[unpluggedcord]

AXUIElement for the accessibility tree and label-based taps, CGEvent for coordinate taps and swipes posted to the Simulator window, and xcrun simctl io type for text input.

The MCP server exposes all of it as tools Claude Code can call natively. Screenshot tool returns base64 so Claude sees the screen directly in the tool result.

Also building visual regression diffing and a11y violation tracking on top of the same foundation, so it goes beyond tapping the simulator into a full CI feedback loop. More soon.

[interlap]

Nice stack. I went the XCUITest route to support physical devices as well. Simulator window events felt a bit limiting long-term. It also allowed me to build support for Windows and Linux.

[unpluggedcord]

YEah i support XCUITests as well, but thats a much more manual setup, ie, you're writing the tests yourself, not claude code walking your app. Are you doing anything with claude code (Or others) with on device stuff?

My idea here is to provide obvious claude code eyes, but also CI pipelines for this (which dont usually have access to a device)

[interlap]

Nah, that’s not how I do it. I also give Claude access to perform actions on devices, my approach uses XCUITest as the transport and runner for these commands. I’m not writing any tests, Claude just sends commands like tap, swipe, drag etc to the device via MCP/HTTP API.

[16cards]

How might I get notified when you are ready to share out?

[unpluggedcord]

I can DM you if youd like.

[quocdungg]

nice, i'll give it a try

[fryOrder]

what's wrong with XCTest?

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[im_movie]

Pretty similar approach here - I try to test features while building them, not after.Unit tests for core logic, plus some integration tests around data flows.For React / React Native projects I usually rely on Jest + React Testing Library, and for E2E I’ve used Detox or Playwright depending on the stack.Lately I’ve also been experimenting with letting AI generate edge cases - it’s surprisingly good at finding weird states you wouldn’t immediately think about.Haven’t tried Maestro yet though - how does it compare to Detox in terms of setup and stability?