Automated testing on Physical Mobile Devices
BrowserStack supports automated browser testing via Selenium and Appium on real iOS and Android devices.
Note: Running your Selenium and Appium tests on BrowserStack Automate requires a username and an access key. To obtain your username and access keys, sign up for a Free Trial or purchase a plan.
Why test on Physical Mobile devices?
Running your test suite on physical mobile devices on the BrowserStack Real Device Cloud has several advantages. Here are some key ones:
- Test on a real environment - Testing on a physical mobile device ensures that your tests are running on real world conditions. This reduces false positives, and makes it easier to replicate bugs users are having on their devices.
- Better performance - Tests on physical mobile devices run much faster when compared to emulators/simulators, resulting in significantly faster build times.
- Parallel testing - By harnessing the scale of BrowserStack's Real Device Cloud, you can run many tests in parallel, resulting in a significant reduction of your test times.
Getting Started
Testing on physical mobile devices requires just a few changes to your test scripts. You will need to pass the flag realMobile and specify which device you want to test on. Refer to the table below:
Capabilities:
| Capability | Values |
|---|---|
| realMobile Use this flag to test on a physical mobile device. |
true, false Default: false |
| device Specifies a particular mobile device for the test environment. |
You can find a full list of supported devices here |
| os_version Use this capability to specify the OS version of the device. |
The os_version capability is compulsory for JS testing |
| browserstack.appium_version Use this capability to set the Appium version in your test scripts. |
Android: 1.21.0 , 1.20.2 , 1.19.1 , 1.18.0 , 1.17.0 (default on Android 5 and above), 1.16.0 , 1.15.0 , 1.14.0 , 1.13.0 , 1.12.1 , 1.11.1 , 1.10.1 , 1.9.1 , 1.8.0 , 1.7.2 , 1.7.1 , 1.6.5 (default on Android 4.4 and below) iOS: 1.21.0 , 1.20.2 , 1.19.1 , 1.18.0 , 1.17.0 (default on iOS 12, 13 and 14), 1.16.0 , 1.14.0 , 1.13.0 , 1.12.1 , 1.11.1 , 1.10.1 , 1.9.1 , 1.8.0 , 1.7.2 , 1.7.1 , 1.7.0 (default on iOS 10 and 11), 1.6.5 Note: All values are strings. |
Local Testing
Local Testing allows you to test your private and internal servers on BrowserStack cloud. You can also use Local Testing to test web applications located behind firewalls, or web applications accessed through proxies.
Local testing is supported on Physical Mobile devices. View Documentation
Have questions? We are happy to help. Contact us