How Selenium or Appium Tests Work for Mobile Apps and Games?
Tags: selenium, appium, apptesting
Published: 2023-01-03 10:45:30

In this competitive world, do you need clarification about how [Selenium](https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/understanding-selenium-the-automation-testing-tool/) Test Works for Mobile Apps and Games? You’ll get every detail here!

We all have been confabulating Selenium (Appium) flavors and angles in mobile and game-testing apps. Most web app developers are [leveraging Selenium](https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/the-importance-of-parallel-testing-in-selenium/) for PC-powered web testing, desktop, and today the exact functionality and logic are offered for developing the tests for games and mobile apps.

Appium, IPA, APK, and Different Android API Levels
People might need clarification when we talk about Selenium and Appium. Let’s clear this out, Appium is a mobile app test automation tool for native, web, and hybrid apps for Android and iOS devices. It leverages JSON Wire Protocol to communicate with Android and iOS applications leveraging Selenium WebDriver. In short, what goes well with Selenium will also go well with Appium. It’s due to the framework that is a wrapper that exchanges Selenium WebDriver commands into Selendroid (Android, API level 16) or UIAutomator (Android, API level 17), or UI Automation (iOS) commands depending on the type of device.

Remember to monitor the Selenium Toolkit pushed by cross-browser testing to help you throughout the process of getting started with Selenium.

Points to Keep in Mind When Automating Mobile App Testing
Let’s see how test automation can enhance development and add speed and value.

1. Costs & Assets
Irrespective of going for automated or manual testing, you need the following resources and assets: infrastructure, people, time, training, and Android app performance testing tools. Test automation will offer a good ROI depending on the application and project size.

For instance, automated tests can speedily run over and over again after creating the test cases at no additional cost and can be rapidly completed compared to manual testing. Automated app testing can decrease the time needed to run the tests from hours to a week. It’s an essential time-saving factor that plays a major role in cost and efficiency.

2. Reusability & Test Coverage
[Automated testing](https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/automated-functional-testing-a-successful-test-strategy/) can accelerate the scope of tests and depth and indispensably enhance app quality. Thorough and lengthy tests are generally not feasible with manual testing. Ideally, test cases must have complete access to an app and test all its aspects; data tables, internal program states, memory contents, and file contents – to examine whether the product behaves as per the expectation.

Automated tests can efficiently perform thousands of confusing test cases during every test run, offering coverage that is not feasible with manual testing. Developers will be free from repetitive manual tests and have time to create more compelling features and design new automated test cases.

3. Integrated App Development Plus Testing Cycle
Rising productivity and efficiency with automation starts with accepting a new mindset. App tests should often be repeated during all development cycles to guarantee the best possible application quality. With every code modification, app tests must be repeated.

For each launch, your app must be tested on all the supporting hardware and operating system variants. If you manually repeat these, it would be considered time-consuming and costly. For instance, manually running comprehensive tests on all variants of Android and real devices would be a time consuming process.

4. Enhance Effectiveness
In all, professional automated app testing is a solution to a general problem: how to produce reliable and robust, high-quality apps with the complexity of under massive competitive pressure and technology. Automated testing enhances business results in three ways; greater testing effectiveness, testing efficiency, and a lesser Time-To-Market.

5. Tools & Technology
Choose the most robust [cross-platform](https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/pcloudys-new-platform-built-for-you/) procedure to get the most out of your test coverage and increase efforts. Automated steps can benefit cost reduction and validation requirements via automated test cases.

Areas to Focus on When Testing for Mobile and Gaming Apps
1. Visual Performance
There should be consistency in performance across all devices among various users. You should [test the visuals](https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/pcloudy-makes-visual-testing-ridiculously-simple-with-its-visual-ai-plugin/) and graphics on as many real devices as feasible. To examine how excellently your game or app responds to multiple usage levels, including battery and performance usage, keep in mind to design long-lasting tests.

Run load tests to examine whether your game impressively runs under a large load for a long time. These performance tests will gauge how liable your game is on actual devices.

2. User Interface & Functionality
A UI and its functionality will directly impact your game or app’s success. Encompassing gameplay and visual appeal are the most crucial things, and you should ensure that these two things are intact. Multiple things are there which need to be tested in the UI, and these are:

Elements & UI layouts: Games are purposely targeted at various screen types and resolutions. Regression testing must be performed every time the UI layout changes to guarantee that the game works.

Screen resolution: there are plenty of screen resolutions available on Android to help developers. However, you should test your game across the resolution to guarantee consistent graphics.

Screen orientation: Many apps, and games can get the wrong orientation. Suppose the resolution of the screen changes during an interaction. For instance, what can happen? Does the game or app perform well in portrait and landscape modes? These are questions that need to be answered to ensure a smooth experience and gameplay.

Menu structure and functions: Test menu behavior, functionality, and structures can ideally be automated with the help of instrumentation and multiple test-automation frameworks.

3. Multi-user Features
It’s too familiar that multi-user supports both applications and games. Testing multiplayer abilities is vital and is more challenging, requiring actual users to gauge the performance.

4. Automate Functions
All developers mostly use some mobile app test automation tools to automate a few workflows in the apps. The practice is highly suggested as it offloads code development for performing non-core functionalities.

5. User-experience & Usability
One can’t do User experience, navigation flow, and testing usability on a PC. So forget emulators and only use actual devices. And to test your app’s usability and entertainment factor, consider two things; background events and user interaction & responsiveness.

Final Thoughts
You now have a clear vision regarding; how Selenium (Appium) tests work for mobile apps and games to improve user experience, automate functionality, security, usability, and more. With the right tools and platform, we’re sure you’ll be able to release high quality apps that are free of bugs and poor experiences. One of the crucial aspects to ensure a smooth enjoyable experience is to test your apps on a wide range of real devices by using an app testing platform such as pCloudy. We hope this has added some value to your learning experience. Happy Testing!