Test Biometric Authentication on BrowserStack mobile devices

The majority of mobile devices today support biometric hardware sensors to authenticate device owner’s identity. BrowserStack enables you to test biometric authentication such as touch ID/fingerprint sensor and face ID on a BrowserStack mobile device with XCUITest framework.

Supported devices and apps

Enable Biometric Authentication

Use BrowserStack parameter enableBiometric and set it to true in the REST API request to enable Biometric Authentication functionality for your XCUITest test session.

This ensures your app undergoes Sensor Instrumentation, which is a process using which BrowserStack supports the app’s interaction with biometric mobile sensors on Browserstack real devices.

curl -u "username:accesskey" \
-X POST "https://api-cloud.browserstack.com/app-automate/xcuitest/v2/build" \
-d '{
"enableBiometric": "true",
"app": "bs://j3c874f21852ba57957a3fdc33f47514288c4ba4", 
"testSuite": "bs://f7c874f21852ba57957a3fdc33f47514288c4ba4", 
"devices": ["iPhone 11-13"]}' \
-H "Content-Type: application/json"

Test Biometric Authentication after enabling it

When you trigger the Biometric Authentication test workflow in your app, the below BrowserStack prompt would show up. You can click on Pass or Fail to succeed or fail the authentication respectively.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How does Biometric Authentication work on BrowserStack mobile devices?

BrowserStack supports an app’s interaction with different mobile sensors such as Biometric using Sensor Instrumentation. Sensor Instrumentation is the process in which, if Biometric is enabled for the session, we inject BrowserStack’s Biometric code module into the app, which mocks or overrides Biometric APIs used by the app.

2. What Biometric APIs are supported by BrowserStack Biometric feature?

Please note that Biometric feature will work only if the app uses any of the following supported Biometric APIs. To get more details about the Biometric APIs your app uses please check with your app development team.

We currently support the following Biometric APIs in iOS SDK :

• canEvaluatePolicy and evaluatePolicy APIs from the LAContext class in the Apple’s iOS Biometric SDK. For more details, please check LAContext Apple documentation.

3. Do we need to register Biometric on the mobile device or make any changes in the app code?

No. You do not need to register any Biometric on the mobile device or make any changes in the app code.

Need some help?

If you have any queries, please get in touch with us.

Related topics

• Manage your uploaded app or test suite using our upload app REST API and upload test suite REST API.

• Use the get app API endpoint and list test suites API endpoint to list your recently uploaded apps and test suites.

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