Did you know that in 2026, there’s likely to be a whopping 38 billion downloads Apple App Store app downloads? That’s a 15% increase compared to 2021.
The staggering iOS market size is enough to convince organizations that if they don’t conduct comprehensive iOS app testing, their business is doomed. In this post, we’ll take a detailed look at iOS app testing, explaining manual vs. automation, strategies, best practices, and so on.
What is iOS App Testing?
iOS app testing is the process of validating security, usability, performance, and functionality of mobile apps for iOS to ensure expected app behavior across various Apple devices and iOS versions, network conditions, and screen sizes. It targets catching bugs in the early phases of the testing life cycle and ultimately delivering a crash-free and seamless experience to users.
Importance of iOS Mobile App Testing for Enterprises
iOS mobile application testing plays a crucial role in offering high-performance, reliable, and secure digital experiences. Enterprises typically set the goal of providing users with premium quality. Any crashes, broken user interface flows, and performance glitches can significantly damage the business’s reputation.
iPads, iPhones, and other Apple devices also undergo frequent operating system updates, which can have a negative impact on app functionality in the absence of thorough testing. Enterprises should also test across different screen sizes and device models to ensure consistency in UX.
In addition to that, various Enterprise mobile applications consist of complex integrations and sensitive data, which makes testing for networks, ability, data security, and compliance even more mandatory. Here is what businesses can expect with robust app testing for iOS:
- Reduced the cost of fixing bugs post-release.
- Maintenance of compliance and security standards specifically for industries such as Healthcare and Fintech.
- Ensuring high user retention and satisfaction.
- Reduced time-to-market with the help of early bug detection.
All in all, a well tested iOS application is necessary for mobility initiatives of enterprises by mitigating as many risks as possible.
Different Methods of iOS App Testing
We can broadly categorize iOS app testing into manual as well as automated methods, each having their own ideal use scenarios and strengths. However, it would be safe to say that most Enterprise-grade apps would greatly benefit from a hybrid approach. Let’s understand each in detail.
Manual iOS App Testing
Manual iOS testing is a process that involves interaction between real testers and the app in a way that end users would use it. The main aim is to uncover UI/UX problems, visual inconsistencies, navigation errors, and gesture bugs.
Key Benefits:
- Perfect for ad-hoc and exploratory testing.
- Important for user experience and gesture-based testing.
- Effective for conducting the validation of accessibility and localization.
- Offers support for detecting layout and visual issues across different devices.
Some of the most prominent manual testing activities for iOS apps include:
- Verifying gestures, buttons, and input fields.
- Manually navigating through the app.
- Checking app behavior under various network conditions.
- Logging usability problems and bugs.
Automated iOS App Testing
Automated testing of iOS applications leverages scripts to validate an app’s functionality across various OS versions, real-world conditions, and multiple devices. It’s perfect for repetitive tasks such as performance, regression, and compatibility testing.
Key Benefits:
- Seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines.
- High Scalability.
- Reduced manual error.
- High test coverage and faster test execution.
You can use the appropriate cloud platform that offers the features your organization needs to test at scale, preferably on real devices.
All in all, while manual testing is vital to validating experience, automation testing ensures higher coverage and speed. Together, they contribute to a robust testing strategy for iOS apps, which is ideal for most Enterprise needs.
iOS App Testing: Manual vs. Automation Explained
Now that we have a basic idea of the different methods of iOS app testing, let’s check out some of the differences between them in a clear, tabular form.
Table
How to Create an Effective iOS App Testing Strategy
It’s important that your iOS addressing strategy be robust to ensure reliability, performance, and high quality across Apple’s diverse OS and device ecosystem. Whether it’s an Enterprise-grade platform or a consumer-facing app, here’s how to create an effective iOS app testing strategy.
- Have Clarity In Defining Testing Goals
Testers should set test objectives around security, performance, device compatibility, UI, consistency, and functionality, and align them with app complexity and business priorities.
- Balance Automated and Manual Testing
Using manual testing for gestures, interactions, UI/UX, and exploratory scenarios is beneficial. On the other hand, you can use automation for multi-device compatibility, performance, and regression testing.
- Writing Real-World Test Cases
Concentrate on common mobile conditions such as interruptions, low battery, and network drops along with focusing on edge cases and actual user behavior while creating test cases.
- Incorporate CI/CD Integration
Automate testing workflows and builds with the help of CI tools such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins to ensure continuity in terms of feedback and accelerated release cycles.
- Collect Feedback and Keep Iterating
Distribute beta builds for feedback using the platform of your choice and keep collecting user insights. It’s important to keep iterating continuously before fully releasing and even after to minimize production bugs and establish a stronger market presence.
Pcloudy’s iOS App Testing Tool
If you’re looking forward to enhancing iOS app release quality and accelerating your releases, Pcloudy features a leading iOS app testing tool by offering real iOS device testing on multiple iOS versions. Their extensive device farm offers a wide pool of legacy as well as latest iOS devices.
You can leverage Appium and XCUITest to automate iOS app testing online. The plug and play nature of the platform doesn’t require any additional installations or configurations. Let’s check out its features in detail.
- Local Testing on Latest Real iOS Devices
The Wildnet feature allows testers to test locally hosted iOS applications on various devices and run tests on local environments.
- Wider Test Coverage
It’s hard to come across an iOS device and OS combo that isn’t available on Pcloudy. Organizations can say hello to wider and more comprehensive test coverage with the wide array of available iOS devices.
- Automate With Your Preferred Frameworks
Testers can automate iOS mobile app testing on real devices with their preferred frameworks, like Selenium, Appium, etc., along with Pcloudy’s codeless test automation and parallely execute test cases to save time.
- Testing Actual Gestures With Other Real-World Conditions
Real-world testing allows QA teams to leverage features such as biometric authentication, GPS, localization, network simulation, real SIM devices, file transfer, image injection, push notifications, and so on. The platform further deepens the authenticity of testing by offering testing through natural gestures such as tap, zoom, scroll, swipe, and interaction with voice commands.
- Testing in Dev Environments
Pcloudy’s Local Testing feature allows QA teams to test in the development as well as staging environments without any additional setup.
How to Conduct Simplified and Comprehensive iOS App Testing with Pcloudy
Now that we’re clear about Pcloudy’s features for iOS app testing, let’s check out how to simplify iOS app testing on the platform.
Step 1: Open the MyData section and upload your app..
Step 2: Click on ‘App Performance Testing’.
Step 3: Go to the performance testing module and go to ‘App Performance Testing’.
Step 4: Select the app and establish the device connection. The application will launch once you click on record.
Step 5: Mimic the user journey and check out the performance dashboard by clicking on ‘Reports’. Check any detailed metrics you want.
iOS App Testing Best Practices
Testing iOS apps requires a methodical and structured approach to ensure high compatibility, usability, security, and performance across different versions and devices. Let’s examine some best practices.
- Integration of Testing Into CI/CD Pipelines
Integrating testing into CI/CD pipelines allows you to run tests on every pull request or build to detect bugs early. When testers integrate the tests into the DevOps flow, it enhances release quality and accelerates development cycles.
- Monitoring and Optimizing App Performance
Keep track of battery drain, application launch times, memory consumption, and CPU usage. Conduct performance testing to identify bottlenecks that could degrade UX, especially on older versions of iOS devices.
- Check for Compliance With App Store Guidelines
The review process for compliance by Apple is generally very stringent compared to window or android app stores and non-compliance with Apple’s App Store guidelines can result in outright rejections. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that the application sticks to data privacy requirements, incorporates appropriate use of permissions, and doesn’t make use of private APIs. Once you’re testing, having app store guidelines in mind reduces launch delays and ensures sustainability for the long haul.
- Testing on Both Real Devices and Simulators
While simulators are excellent for UI validation and quick initial testing, they can fully replicate all real-world conditions such as network fluctuations, hardware behavior, and touch gestures. Therefore, it’s crucial to complement simulator testing with testing on real devices, preferably using cloud-based services to capture device specific issues and edge cases.
Read More: AI in Automation Testing: Accelerate Your Test Cycles by 3X
Conclusion
Thorough and effective iOS application testing is crucial to clear Apple’s App store review to deliver a seamless UX. By combining performance monitoring, security validation, test automation, and real device testing, it’s possible to ensure readiness, security, and stability of iOS apps for a variety of scenarios. Cloud platforms such as Pcloudy real device lab, simplify the scaling of testing efforts without having to invest in multiple physical devices.
FAQs
How can I efficiently test an iOS app without using physical devices?
Platforms such as Pcloudy offer real device cloud access to conduct automated testing without a physical device.
How can I make sure that my iOS app adheres to App Store compliance?
Always ensure that your iOS app is reviewed against the current app store review guidelines and undergoes testing on real devices to ensure that there aren’t any content issues, policy violations, or crashes.
What types of iOS testing are must before app release?
Functional testing, UI/UX validation, recovery testing, security and compliance testing, performance and load testing are some of the most crucial types of iOS testing that are a must before app release.
