In today’s digital economy, software developers cannot afford to rely on anything less than the latest software development practices to deliver efficient products and services. As per the data reported by Statista, the number of mobile app downloads globally has been increasing from 2016 onward, surpassing 200 billion in 2019. In 2021, consumers downloaded 230 billion mobile apps to their connected devices, an increase of more than 63% from 140.7 billion app downloads in 2016.

1. 5 Popular Test Automation Tools For
React Native Apps
In today’s digital economy, software developers cannot afford to rely on anything less than the
latest software development practices to deliver efficient products and services. As per the data
reported by Statista, the number of mobile app downloads globally has been increasing from
2016 onward, surpassing 200 billion in 2019. In 2021, consumers downloaded 230 billion mobile
apps to their connected devices, an increase of more than 63% from 140.7 billion app
downloads in 2016.
Given the increasing number of app downloads, testing apps has become more critical than
ever, as it helps you rectify mistakes and verify that your code is working. Perhaps even more
importantly, testing ensures that your code continues to work in the future as you add new
features, refactor the existing ones, or upgrade significant dependencies of your project.
According to the World Quality Report, automating the testing process is helping organizations
speed up their decision-making to provide better outcomes in a shorter period. Automating the
testing process has many benefits, but the most crucial advantage is that app developers can
use automated tests to detect problems quickly before sending them to QA. Moreover, tests can
run automatically whenever source code changes are checked in and notify the team or the
developer if they fail. Features like these save app developers time and increase their
confidence.

2. Graph showing the number of mobile app downloads globally during 2016-2021
Nowadays, most applications running on different platforms, such as iOS, Android, and the web,
are developed with the help of React Native. React Native is an open framework for
cross-platform mobile app development for iOS and Android. So, React Native automation
testing plays a crucial role in the app testing process. React automation testing is crucial to
delivering flawless UX. Given that React Native generates cross-platform apps, manual testing
will quickly become a highly time-consuming task. In this regard, React Native automation
testing will save both time and money in the longer run.
Now, let's take a look at various testing processes available for React Native apps and five
popular React Native testing tools for automated testing.
What are React Native Testing Apps?
React Native testing apps are specialized tools designed to evaluate and verify the functionality
of applications built using the React Native framework. These tools are essential for developers
aiming to create high-quality mobile apps that operate smoothly across multiple platforms like
iOS and Android. Testing React Native apps is a cornerstone in app development, enabling
developers to discover and fix bugs before the product reaches the end user, thus ensuring a
seamless and engaging user experience.
Some types of tests for testing React Native apps include:
● Unit Testing: This involves testing individual components or functions in isolation from
the rest of the application.
● Integration Testing: For React Native apps, integration testing could involve checking
the interaction between different components.

3. ● UI Testing: Also known as end-to-end testing, UI testing checks the interactions that a
user would make with the application.
Let's consider the types of tests in further detail.
Importance of React Automation Testing
React Native helps build cross-platform mobile apps by writing code once and deploying it on
iOS and Android. However, the complexity of modern mobile applications requires robust testing
to ensure quality and performance. This is where React automation testing comes into play.
● Consistency Across Platforms: Automated testing ensures your application behaves
consistently across devices and OS. This is crucial for maintaining a uniform user
experience.
● Faster Release Cycles: You can execute automated tests quickly, enabling faster
detection of bugs and issues. This accelerates the development process and reduces
the time to market.
● Improved Test Coverage: Manual testing can miss edge cases or complex user
interactions. Automation allows for comprehensive test coverage, ensuring all
functionalities are thoroughly tested.
● Cost Efficiency: While setting up automation initially requires an investment, it
significantly reduces the cost of regression testing and manual efforts over time.
Automated tests can run unattended, freeing up resources for other critical tasks.
● Early Bug Detection: Automated tests can be integrated into the CI/CD pipeline,
enabling continuous testing and early detection of defects. This helps in addressing
issues before they get bigger.
● Enhanced Reliability: Automated tests eliminate human error, providing more reliable
and accurate test results. This reliability is crucial for maintaining the quality and
performance of the application.
● Scalability: As your application grows, the number of test cases increases. Automation
makes it easier to scale your testing efforts to match the application's complexity and
ensure ongoing quality.
Incorporating automation into your React Native app testing strategy is essential for delivering
high-quality applications that meet user expectations and perform well under various conditions.
By leveraging automation, development teams can achieve better efficiency, reliability, and
overall project success.
Various Types of React Native App Testing
React Native has been enjoying great popularity for its features over the years, and it is one of
the best programming languages. So, let’s check out various types of testing used for React
Native apps.

4. 1. Writing Tests
The first step in testing is to write code that is testable. Writing your entire program in a single
file with many lines of code will lead to numerous confusions while testing. So, you can write
your code in multiple small modules that you can test more thoroughly than if you tested the
assembled whole. In this way, writing testable code is intertwined with writing clean, modular
code.
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2. Unit Tests
Unit testing is a fundamental testing process used for mobile apps. JavaScript objects and
methods present at the primary level are tested with it. Unit testing covers the minor parts of
code, like individual functions and classes. When the object being tested has any
dependencies, you will often need to mock them out. The critical thing about unit testing is that
they are very quick to write and run. Therefore, as your testing progresses, you will get fast
feedback about whether your tests are passing or not.
Image representing the unit tests
Mocking
When we test objects with external dependencies, you will need to mock them out. Mocking is
when you change some dependency of your code with your own implementation. Usually,
working with real objects in tests is better than using mocks, but there are situations where this
is not possible. So, mocking will help complete the unit testing of React Native apps without any
hurdles.
3. Component Tests
React components are the building blocks of apps, and users can directly interact with their
output. Even though your app's business logic has high testing coverage, without component
testing, you may deliver a broken user interface to your users. Each component is tested
functionally and visually with component testing.
For testing React Native components, there are two essential things you may have to test:
Interaction: This testing ensures that the component is in the operating condition when
interacting with a user.
Rendering: This testing ensures that the component rendering output used by React is
accurate.

5. Image representing the component tests
Component testing is a JavaScript test running in the Node.js environment. It does not consider
any iOS, Android, or other platform code backing the React Native components. This type of
testing cannot give you 100% confidence that everything is working, as it cannot find the bug in
the iOS or Android code.
4. Integration Tests
When developers are writing codes for complex software systems, individual components of the
app need to interact with each other. All individual units are combined and tested in integration
testing to ensure that their cooperation works per the app’s requirement.
Image representing the integration tests
An app only needs integration testing if it:
● Combines several modules of the app
● Uses an external system
● Makes a network call to other applications
● Operates any file or database I/O
5. End-to-End Tests
With the end-to-end (E2E) testing, you can check your app's operation on a device (or a
simulator/emulator) from the user's perspective. This testing is done by creating your app in the
release configuration and running the tests against it. In E2E testing, React Native components,
React Native APIs, Redux stores, or any business logic are not tested. E2E testing can give you
the highest possible confidence that your app is working correctly.

6. Image representing the end-to-end tests
There are various end-to-end testing tools available for React Native apps. Detox is a popular
framework because it is customized for React Native apps. Another popular automation tool in
the space of iOS and Android apps is Appium.
5 Popular Test Automation Tools for React Native Apps
Conducting a react native app test involves an array of tools designed to assess the app’s
functionality across different devices and platforms. React automation testing tools help ensure
that your app is in perfect condition by performing various tests, ranging from static analysis to
end-to-end tests. In the coming section, let's discuss five popular React Native testing tools for
automated testing.
1. Appium
Among the top choices for this purpose is Appium, renowned for its capability in react native
Appium testing that simplifies cross-platform testing tasks. Appium is an open-source
automation testing tool that offers seamless automation of native, mobile web, and hybrid
applications on iOS, Android, and Windows platforms. It utilizes the WebDriver protocol to drive
apps on these platforms, serving as a server that receives commands from automated scripts
and translates them into instructions understandable by mobile devices. Similarly, it captures
responses from mobile devices and converts them into automated scripts.
One of the key advantages of Appium is its cross-platform compatibility, enabling the writing of
tests for multiple platforms, such as iOS, Android, and Windows, using the same API. This is
made possible by the Appium "drivers" that power each supported platform. These drivers are
specialized software components that implement the Appium protocol for a particular platform,
enabling smooth automation across different environments. Embracing tools like Appium for

7. react native Appium testing can significantly streamline your development process, ensuring
your app performs well on any platform.
Appium boasts several powerful features, including:
● It does not require application source code or library in React applications.
● It has multi-platform support, i.e., it can run the same test cases on multiple platforms.
● It allows the parallel execution of test scripts.
● It supports various languages, like C#, Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, and JavaScript, with
node.js.
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2. Detox
Detox is an end-to-end framework for applications on mobile devices, and Wix developed it. The
significant problems in UI testing of mobile devices are slowness and flakiness. Detox solves
the problem of slowness and flakiness for UI testing of mobile devices. It provides excellent
abstractions to select and trigger actions on elements during the testing.
Some of the significant features of Detox are:
● It monitors asynchronous operations in the app to reduce the flakiness of finding the
async elements in the app UI.
● It is a grey-box testing tool that can access the code and data from mobile apps.
● It easily connects to any CI systems and prominent cloud testing services.
● It provides fast feedback on your end-to-end testing.
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3. Jest
Jest is an open-source testing framework created on JavaScript. It is designed majorly to test
React and React Native-based web applications. Generally, unit testing is not very useful when
it is run on the front-end of any software. This is mainly because unit tests for the front-end
development require extensive, time-consuming configuration. Jest framework can reduce this
complexity to a great extent.
Moreover, the Jest framework is used to validate everything around JavaScript, especially the
browser rendering of web applications. Jest is also widely used for automating browser testing.
It helps you write tests with an approachable, familiar, and feature-rich API that gives you faster
results. Jest offers a combination of an assertion library, a test runner, and a built-in mocking
library. Its features make it the best tool for testing JavaScript Library Projects, such as
AngularJS, Vue JS, Node JS, Babel, and TypeScript.
Notable features of Jest include:
● Speed and performance
● Pre-commit hooks

8. ● Easy to migrate
● Additional features and configurations
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4. Karma
Karma is a node based automation testing tool. Karma’s ability to run tests against real
browsers and real devices makes the testing more robust and reliable. As different browsers
have different DOM implementations, testing against them is essential if you want to ensure
your application will behave appropriately for most of its users. Karma is a tool that makes
test-driven development faster and easy. The main focus of Karma is to develop a productive
testing environment for the developers, where they get instant feedback about the test.
Notable features of Karma include:
● Remote control
● Easy debugging via WebStorm, IDE, or Google Chrome
● Continuous integration
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5. Jasmine
Jasmine is an open-source JavaScript library testing framework to test any JavaScript
application. Jasmine mainly helps with automated unit testing, which has become an essential
practice while developing and deploying modern-day web applications. Jasmine uses the
Behavior Driven Development (BDD) procedure to ensure that each line of JavaScript statement
is appropriately unit tested. It is not dependent on browsers, DOM, or any JavaScript framework.
Thus, the Jasmine testing framework is available for various versions, like standalone and
node.js. It also offers extensive support for Python, Ruby, and other JavaScript-based
languages. Another benefit of using Jasmine is that it is an independent framework with minimal
language, browser, and platform dependency.
Significant features of Jasmine are:
● It is independent of other JavaScript frameworks.
● It does not need any DOM.
● It uses clean and obvious syntax.
Conclusion
According to Statista, in 2021, 38% of software developers used React Native to build apps. As
people are using more apps based on this framework, React Native testing on devices is of
utmost importance. Automating React Native app tests with the help of the tools mentioned
above will save developers a lot of time and effort.
If your team already utilizes test automation tools, you can seamlessly integrate them with the
powerful HeadSpin Platform. This allows you to execute your automated tests on any device to

9. which you have access. With this integration, your test automation tool takes care of the
functional aspects of the test, while the HeadSpin Platform provides valuable data and insights
to evaluate the non-functional aspects of the test.
Article Sources:
This article was originally published on:
https://www.headspin.io/blog/5-popular-test-automation-tools-for-react-native-apps