9 Best GUI Testing Tools in Software Testing

There are parameters cannot be just guessed by looking at a single device. For this, we need GUI testing tools that not only facilitates it but also works as a reliable partner. In this post, we will highlight nine such tools along with their strengths and leave it to you to decide to choose the one that you find best.

Best GUI Testing Tools

As a tester, we tend to incline towards automating the testing because of the repeated workflows that may consume more time for the tester. Here, we have a look at the best GUI testing tools available in the market that provide interesting features for testers.

check here – Automated GUI testing

Testsigma

The first tool that comes to mind when we discuss GUI testing is Testsigma, and the reason for this is its low learning curve and efficiency in creating test cases. There are two hurdles in every automation tester’s life when they are introduced to a new tool. First, whether they know the supported language or not. If not, they need to learn it from scratch. And second, how tough is it to create test cases which again consume time in learning and practicing?

Testsigma brings out the feature of implementing test cases in the English language. As a tester, I just need to write English text, and the natural language processing abilities of the tool convert them to actions that the tool understands. Testsigma comes with loads of features for the testers and the organization as a whole.

Highlighting features

• English-based tests: As mentioned, the medium of communication between a tester and the system is English. This saves a lot of time as the test cases are written quickly.
• Self-healing: Testsigma comes with self-healing capabilities that can detect any change in the code, such as a locator, and replicate those changes in the test cases as well.
• Visual layout testing: Testsigma comes with the technology that can detect UI differences between two pages. This helps when we have a page UI designed and want to know the micro differences between them. It also helps to confirm if everything is similar to the previous versions by matching screenshots.
• Bulk update: The platform provides an option to turn on/off more than one test case at one go.
• Support for web and mobile: You can automate the tests for web as well as mobile, from the same place.
• Cross-browser testing: You will need to verify your UI on multiple devices, the number of these devices can even go to 100. Testsigma can provide all the devices under their hood(via cloud-device labs), saving time in procurement and infrastructure build-up.
• Parallel Testing: Testsigma supports the execution of your test cases in parallel.
• Integrations: Testsigma comes with a long list of integrations that may help you proceed when UI testing is completed. For instance, once you have found issues, you can update them on JIRA from within the platform.
• Also available as Open Source: Testsigma is also available as opensource and free version.

Ranorex Studio

One of the trusted names in GUI testing is Ranorex. Released in the early 2000s, Ranorex today uses its proprietary technology to run efficient GUI tests on websites. From integrations to data-driven testing, Ranorex brings out advanced features of a GUI testing tool.

Check here – Ranorex vs Katalon

Highlighted features:

• Object recognition – Ranorex provides object recognition features developed by them in-house by the name RanoreXPath. This also includes recognition of dynamic objects.
• Cross-platform usage – Ranorex can be used on desktop applications, web apps, and mobile apps as well. This enables teams to use only a single tool for their multiple applications.
• Advanced record and replay – The platform provides advanced record and replay technology that records the tests, and the tester can even edit them later on. Testers are also allowed to drag and drop objects from the repository to supplement recordings.
• IDE on the go – Ranorex provides its own IDE that will complement the platform’s features and help you write and debug code faster.
• Test command center – Test suites, for execution, may contain a lot of tests that may need to be run on different platforms. Ranorex provides a mechanism so that they can be separated and routed to their exact platform easily. This can also be redirected to Selenium Grid or a cloud provider as decided by the team.
• Integrations – Ranorex provides a long list of integration that will help you create a large infrastructure from a single platform.

Check here – Ranorex vs TestComplete

Eggplant Functional

Eggplant functional is a GUI testing tool working by the black-box mechanism. The methodology of Eggplant functional is through a system where the test cases are scripted and another system where test cases are executed. This can be achieved through a VNC connection. Initially built in 2002 by Redstone software, it was later renamed Eggplant Functional when Eggplant acquired the company. Twenty-one years later, the tool is still being developed and popularized by testers.

Highlighting features

• SenseTalk: Eggplant Functional uses SenseTalk as the scripting language developed by them to enhance readability. The language resembles the English language and supports both procedural and object-oriented scripting designs.
• Platform support: Eggplant Functional supports all three major platforms – Mac, Windows, and Linux.
• Turbo capture: The tool comes with a “Turbo Capture” feature that records the mouse and keyboard actions done by the tester. This is then converted to SenseTalk script by Eggplant Functional.
• Optical Character Recognition: Eggplant functional comes with OCR capabilities that help in executing tests faster.

Check here – GUI Testing Checklist

CrossBrowserTesting

CrossBrowserTesting is an offering from Smartbear company that excels in providing a strong suite of applications for all your testing needs. With CrossBrowserTesting, we not only run tests efficiently but can also bring together our whole team to collaborate in the most advanced way possible. All this helps wrap things up quicker with minimum expenses.

Highlighting features

• Real devices: CrossBrowserTesting comes with real devices on their infrastructure. Real devices provide excellent analysis of various parameters as against emulators and simulators that can portray dubious results.
• Cross-browser testing solution: CrossBrowserTesting, similar to Testsigma, provides devices on their platform ready to be tested.
• Visual testing: The platform provides visual testing features to compare screenshots and point out differences in them.
• Record and replay: The record and replay feature records the web test done once by the tester. These tests can then be re-run multiple times on various platforms to check possible changes.

• Parallelism: CrossBrowserTesting’s main strength has always been parallelism. It helps conclude tests in exponentially lower time by running multiple tests on multiple platforms/devices at once.

Squish

Squish is a GUI testing tool developed by Froglogic and released in 2003 initially. Today, it is used by more than 3000 companies that are looking to automate their testing process with easy-to-script language and extremely high scopes of customization. The tool ships with its own IDE, which makes learning and navigation much easier.

Highlighting features

• Multi-platform support: Squish provides support for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, QNX, and many more. It can become a one-stop solution if you are dealing with more than one platform.
• Gherkin support: Squish comes with support for BDD and Gherkin, which are popular languages to construct test cases as they resemble plain English text. This reduces the costs of training testers in a new language.
• Customizable: The tool is shipped along with complete code. Hence, organizations can customize the code according to their requirements and get a tool completely suited to their needs.
• Popular language support: Squish comes with support for Javascript, Perl, Python, and Ruby.
• Integrations: Squish also integrates with third-party tools such as for CI/CD to integrate pipelines with automation test scripts.

Selenium

No GUI testing tool list can be considered complete without mentioning Selenium. The tool is open-source and comes with a suite of tools to provide a complete web application testing experience. Honestly, Selenium is much more than what can be described in a short section in this post. We recommend going through a comprehensive guide to know more about it in detail. However, we can highlight the major features of Selenium here.

Check here – Selenium vs Lambdatest

Highlighting features

• Language support: Selenium is extremely popular just for supporting a very long list of programming languages that too at an early stage. This includes all the popular languages such as Python and Java and a few less popular ones like Groovy and Scala as well.
• Record and replay: Selenium was one of the earlier tools to introduce record-and-replay in their IDE. It is still a popular choice among developers to record tests and replay them multiple times on multiple platforms.
• Large community: Since Selenium was released long back in 2004, it has developed a very vast community that can help at various points to you as a tester.
• Parallelism: Selenium supports parallelism and comes with Selenium Grid that can connect multiple systems to run tests together at the same time.

Check here – Selenium vs Browserstack

Telerik Test Studio

Branding their tool as the “industry’s fastest test recorder”, Telerik Test Studio comes with an IDE and uses a mix of code-based and codeless technologies to execute test cases. Telerik Test Studio has a wide variety of use cases, including functional UI testing, load testing, and responsive UI testing. Available for Windows, Telerik Test Studio also supports cross-browser testing on all the major browsers and desktops for efficient testing.

Highlighting features

• Monitoring system: Telerik Test Studio provides a monitoring system that helps keep track of the health of tests, their coverage, and the application on which we are testing, all at a single place.
• Patent-pending detection: The tool comes with a patent-pending element detection mechanism along with other features such as intelligent suggestions and a centralized object repository.
• Codeless: The blend of codeless with scripted testing helps people with no technical background not only understand test cases but also write them on their own.
• Pipeline integration: Telerik Test Studio can be integrated into the CI/CD pipeline for quicker deliveries and to facilitate the feedback loop.

Katalon Studio

Keeping up with the newer advancements in the testing world, Katalon Studio often stands out in the crowd. It can help you speed up the testing process all the while keeping the highest quality and producing better software.

Highlighting features

• Scalable operations: Katalon is extremely efficient in scaling up the testing process as the project scales. This will help you stick to the same platform for a longer time.
• Visual testing: Katalon studio comes with artificial intelligence-enabled visual testing technology. It can help you detect UI mismatches and bring a unique comparison method for the web application.
• Test recorder: The tool comes with a Selenium-based recording module in which the testers can record their tests. These tests can then be transported to C#, Java, Ruby, and Python.
• Analytics: Katalon studio provides in-depth analytical tools that help analyze our tests and progress in a very lucid way.
• Wide variety of testing: The tool comes with a wide variety of testing methods on top of GUI testing, such as API testing and Cross-browser testing. All can be automated using their own IDE.

Check here – Katalon vs Lambdatest

SilkTest

The final tool in our list of best GUI testing tools is SilkTest. The tool was developed by the name “QA Partner” but was later renamed due to acquisition. SilkTest is used exhaustively for functional testing across various platforms and various browsers. The main focus of SilkTest as a tool and for promotions as well has been the reduction of speed in creating and executing the test cases on your application.

Highlighting features

• Selenium integration: One of the best offerings from SilkTest is that it can integrate with Selenium. This means that your test cases written in Selenium can be used directly on SilkTest, and a tester gets advanced features on those tests that are not offered by Selenium.
• Pipeline integration: SilkTest supports running your test scripts on Docker and enabling the pipeline for CI/CD.
• Cross-platform and Cross-browser testing: The tool can run one-time written test scripts on multiple platforms and multiple browsers providing much more time for testers to invest in other things.
• Virtualize services: If you are unsure about your service’s behavior, you can use virtualization to verify using a virtual machine.

Espresso

Espresso is a UI testing tool developed by Google for conducting UI automation tests on Android applications. Its main goal is to allow testers to test the application in the same way an end-user would operate it. For instance, locating UI elements and performing actions on them. Espresso is highly scalable and prevents test flakiness by blocking unnecessary elements (like direct access to activities).

Highlighting features:

• Google developed: Espresso and Android were developed by Google. This means this tool understands how the operating system works and is designed to work on it most efficiently. Therefore, it becomes beneficial for testers for the same reasons.

• Accessibility testing support: Espresso comes with the AccessibilityChecks class that helps check the accessibility issues in the applications’s UI. This is extremely important considering 16% of the world population suffers from accessibility issues today.

• Logging capabilities: The GUI automation tool comes with automatic logging capabilities whereby logging all the view actions to logcat. It helps in debugging and figuring out the cause of the issue.

• Stable and reliable: Espresso APIs are fast and stable. They wait till the UI actions have been completed before initiating any tests on it. Its APIs and test syntax ensure there are no flaky tests and reliability ensures there is no maintenance work for long in the future.

• Test recorder: Espresso Test Recorder can be used with Android Studio to write UI tests without writing any code. All a tester requires is to open a device, perform actions on it, and assertions for the same. The tests will be automatically generated and can be executed on the same or different devices in the future.

Espresso is one of the most reliable GUI testing tools for Android applications. Since it is developed by Google, testers can ensure that if there are any major API changes coming to Android, Espresso would be among the first ones to provide support for it.

Check here – Appium vs Espresso

Cypress

A modern GUI testing tool for the modern web is Cypress. The tool can test anything that runs on a browser with target areas ranging from end-to-end testing, component testing, accessibility testing, UI coverage, and much more. In addition, the tool uses a test-driven development approach which is a rarity among GUI testing tools.

Check here – Cypress vs Selenium

Highlighting features:

• Multiple products for various needs: Cypress offers four different products namely Cypress App (locally installed), Cypress Cloud (over the cloud), UI Coverage (visual UI coverage), and Cypress Accessibility (providing accessibility checks). This satisfies the different needs of Cypress users as these applications target different areas of application. However, only the Cypress App is free and open-source, all others are paid.

• Snapshot capturing: The GUI testing tool takes screenshots at the points where it deems it necessary. The tester can then hover over the command logs and access the snapshot to know what went wrong at that point.

• Automatic waits: Cypress eliminates the complex async commands that are introduced to wait for an element to load. Instead, it applies an automatic wait mechanism where the tests do not fail but Cypress keeps on retrying until either the element is found or a set timeout is reached.

• Stubs and clocks: Stubs are a common way to bypass certain callbacks and promises in unit tests to focus on a fixed piece of code. Cypress introduces the same concept in UI automation along with the functionality to alter the clock and play around with functions like setInterval, setTimeout, Date, etc. In Cypress, stubs are available for network manipulation as well.

• Visual UI coverage: Cypress can provide an overall picture of UI coverage across the application for each page individually. The tester can understand the missing areas and construct test cases for a better-quality application.

Cypress is highly popular today with many modern features that sync with the current tester’s requirements. While most of its features come in a paid version, it is worth a try for GUI automation.

Check here – Playwright vs Cypress

AutoIT

Designed to be “as small as possible”, AutoIT is a BASIC-like scripting language designed for UI automation testing on Windows. AutoIt is self-contained and isolated and uses keystrokes, mouse movements, and windows/control manipulation to automate UI using basic scripts. This is a powerful feature as it does not load the operating system with huge runtimes and heavy resource utilization. The best part, however, is that AutoIt is completely free to use.

Highlighting features:

• Easy and lightweight: AutoIt is just a basic script that does not require any libraries or dependency installation. It is easy to read, write, and maintain and is extremely lightweight (around 12 MB) which helps in faster execution.

• Builds executable: The scripts written in AutoIt can be converted to executable files that can be then run just like any other application’s binary on the Windows platform.

• Access to DLLs and APIs: AutoIt brings direct access to external DLLs and Windows API functions cutting down the script lines to perform any actions through them.

• Create GUI: AutoIt can be used to create complex GUIs for Windows for development and testing practices.

• Large community: AutoIt has a large community to help the testers in their GUI automation testing journey as the tool can be used for complex analysis including regex and complex functions.

AutoIt started as a small project but today it has grown to be able to automate thousands of PCs at once which is commendable given that it does not depend on anything and is very small in size.

Appium

Appium is a free, open-source, and one of the most popular GUI testing tools today. It can be used to automate tests on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, browsers, and even TVs with easy-to-use syntax. The framework takes motivation from Selenium and therefore works on the WebDriver protocol to accomplish automation tasks in a language of your choice.

Highlighted features:

• Supports multiple languages: Appium supports multiple operating systems and multiple languages to perform GUI testing. The tester need not learn a new programming language or switch back and forth with another tool while working with Appium.

• Uses WebDriver protocol: Appium uses WebDriver protocol to call the APIs. This is similar to Selenium and given how successful Selenium is, this has proven to be a popular method among the community. For people who have already worked on Selenium, starting their Appium journey is just an install away.

• Ship what you test: Appium does not require the testers to change the source code or add any files to the code base at all. The APIs work directly with the binary that will be shipped to the end-users. Hence, the testers can be assured that they ship what they test facilitating the reliability of the system.

• Supports parallelism: Appium supports parallel execution of tests on multiple platforms which helps bring down the overall testing time significantly.

• Large active community: Appium is hugely popular among the testing community especially when it comes to mobile app testing. It helps resolve issues and raise concerns with the framework that ultimately helps in its development.

Appium’s weekly downloads often cross the 300,000 mark. This is solid evidence of how popular Appium is today. Its regular modification and updation depending on the current trends (such as Appium 2.0) has helped it become one of the most adopted GUI testing tools globally.

Check here – Appium vs Selenium

FitNesse

FitNesse is a wiki web server for acceptance, unit, and GUI testing on web applications. It creates specifications on the server using a rich text language that is easy to write and read by both technical and non-technical persons.

Highlighting features

• Easy to learn: FitNesse comes with an effortless learning curve because of the easy-to-write language used for creating scripts.

• Open-source and free: The GUI automation tool is open-source and therefore a lot of developers contribute to enhancing the functionality of the tool frequently. Being open source has also helped the tool to expand its area of impact from UI to acceptance tests. Moreover, it is free to use which is an added advantage.

• Easy to create tests: The tests on FitNesse are written as specifications on the wiki server as wiki pages on a web browser. This is an easy approach that won’t make a tester feel like he is writing tests.

• Supports plugins: There are tons of plugins available on the official website of FitNesse that help extend its functionality in the direction desired by the tester.

FitNesse is an easy-to-use UI automation framework that works on a wiki server. However, it lacks the depth of a good GUI automation tool and therefore, is not recommended to be used at an enterprise level.

Rapise

Rapise is one of the few GUI testing tools that use intelligent test automation with integrated artificial intelligence technology. Bringing modern testing methodologies to web, mobile, and hybrid applications, and ERP applications, Rapise is today available for free with a 30-day trial period.

Highlighting features:

• Codeless testing: Rapise uses codeless test automation to write and execute test cases. It does that through its in-house developed language called Rapise Visual Language (RVL) which it claims is best suitable for building modular, reusable, and powerful automated tests.

• Record and playback: The software comes with an intelligent record and playback functionality where the tester can interact with the application and those actions can be converted to test cases automatically. These can then be saved in a repository and automated for future use.

• Vast testing domain: Rapise can be used with varying testing domains including data-driven testing, robotic process automation (RPA), and cross-browser testing.

• AI-enabled: Rapise puts artificial intelligence into its processes that help bring advancements into error-prone tasks. This includes incorporating self-healing technology in the infrastructure and serving as the backbone of RVL.

• Spy Tools: Rapise provides a collection of spy tools that come into action when the application is running. These spy tools can discover objects and save them as per requirement to be used later in the automation.

• OCR: Optical Character Recognition or OCR is a technology that helps detect text either written by hand or from an image. This is of great help in GUI tools as they can use this technology to write test cases for these texts ensuring a greater coverage that involves image assertions as well.

• Integrations: Automated GUI testing tools can enhance their powers by integrating with third-party tools and expanding their horizon enabling the testers to accomplish all their tasks from a single screen. Rapise, for the same reasons, integrates with Microsoft Azure (for cloud), Device Farms (for access to devices), Appium, Selenium, JMeter, CI/CD, and a lot more such tools.

Rapise is a powerful GUI testing tool with strengths that help it perform in all phases of testing easily.

TestComplete

TestComplete is an all-inclusive GUI testing tool developed by SmartBear. It provides a simple interface with support for desktop, web, and mobile that presents a very simple learning curve to the testers. GUI tests developed by TestComplete are highly scalable, and robust, and cut down the maintenance time of the suite significantly.

Check here – Testcomplete vs Selenium

Highlighting features:

• Record-and-replay: The record and replay facility by TestComplete helps record the test cases, convert them into tests, and replay them later in other automation testing sessions.

• Object recognition: TestComplete combines object recognition and artificial intelligence that equips the software with features such as identifying objects, dynamic UI elements, and visual recognition through AI.

• Keyword-driven testing: With keyword-driven testing, the testers can write test cases without any programming language knowledge purely based on keywords. These keywords are action-specific such as mouse clicks or keyboard entries and all of them can then be turned into automation tests to be used in future sessions.

• Continuous testing integration: The tool can be integrated into CI/CD tools easily with simple REST APIs. The tools supported are Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Git, Zephyr, JIRA, etc.

• Parallel testing: TestComplete also allows parallel testing through which multiple GUI tests can be run on multiple devices simultaneously helping bring down the testing time significantly.

Along with these, TestComplete comes with many more exciting features such as load testing support, visual testing support, and BDD-testing support. It is recommended to try this tool once to feel its complete power.

Check here – Ranorex vs TestComplete

Functionize

In the world of automation, Functionize brings a unique approach that no other GUI testing tools possess. With its generative AI technology fueling the Enterprise Application Intelligent (EAI) Agents, the software can be used to generate and automate workflows for complex applications like Salesforce.

Highlighting features:

• Generative AI-powered automation: The term “generative” in Generative AI automation in Functionize refers to the process where the software can generate and automate complex workflows by itself. The tool can do this autonomously by just integrating it with the target application.

• Browsers and devices available: The platform contains hundreds of browsers and devices (virtual) to run tests on them.

• EAI: The Enterprise Application Intelligent Agent is a software designed with neural network and deep learning to understand complex applications and generate workflows from them. The agents are trained and fine-tuned on large data sets and regularly updated to be on the top of their game.

• testGPT: Functionize comes with an in-built generative AI tool testGPT. It is built using machine learning and deep learning technologies and used for performing full autonomous testing on the application that doesn’t require any manual intervention from beginning to end.

• Integration: Functionize comes integrated with all the necessary software such as CI/CD tools like Jenkins and Circle CI, collaborative tools like Slack, and microservices tools like Docker.

Functionize is a very powerful tool that averages the power of artificial intelligence throughout its processes. If such is the requirement for the team, they should try this software once and understand how EAI works, which Functionize promotes as the backbone of their testing framework.

Check here – Functionize vs Selenium

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Javascript library that performs actions (similar to an end-user) over Chrome, Firefox, and Chrome for testing browsers. The library works in the headless mode (no GUI of its own) and can be downloaded through npm, yarn, or pnpm.

Highlighting features:

• Popular testing protocols: The library uses WebDriver BiDi (Bi-Directional) and DevTools protocol. Both of them are extremely popular among the community and are used for automation on popular browsers, specifically Chromium-based ones.

• High scope: Puppeteer allows for automating most of the actions that a user takes on a browser manually. For instance, submitting forms and providing keyboard input just to name a few.

• Timeline trace: The library allows for timeline tracing which is recording the performance metrics with timestamps when the application is running. It helps diagnose performance issues and identify potential performance bugs.

• Support for Chrome Extensions: Puppeteer supports Chrome extensions as well along with web applications running on Chrome.

• SSR Support: The library supports Server Side Rendering (SSR) for single page applications (SPA) where the page is crawled and rendered on the server and then sent to the client side for testing.

Puppeteer is small and lightweight but can accomplish all the tasks required for GUI testing. It also accommodates tools that facilitate software testing such as screenshot capturing. For individuals and small-scale businesses, this can be a good starting software.

Check here – Playwright vs Puppeteer

WebDriverIO

Another progressive GUI testing tool that runs using WebDriver and WebDriver-BiDi protocol is WebDriverIO. It minimizes the interaction with the application without demanding too much effort from the testers to create scalable and robust automation tests with ease.

Highlighting features:

• Runs on actual browsers: WebDriverIO runs the automation tests on actual browsers that will be used by real end-users instead of relying on modified browser engines that no one will use for operating on the application.

• Popular protocols: WebDriverIO works on standard protocols viz. WebDriver and WebDriver BiDi that are accepted across all browsers. Their high acceptance helps in performing cross-browser testing with ease without external tool support.

• More than GUI testing: While WebDriverIO is one of the smoothest GUI testing tools, it does support domains beyond just the user interface. This includes end-to-end testing, unit testing, and component testing.

• Integrated with Appium: For executing GUI tests beyond the web, the tester will require Appium along with WebDriverIO. This integration is easy to set up and just a few steps can initiate appium installer kit in no time for mobile, TV, and desktop app testing. However, knowledge of Appium is a must for testing in WebDriverIO apart from the web.

• Automatic wait: The tool comes with in-built automatic wait functionality due to which the tool does not start the execution until the elements have populated on the page. This helps eliminate flaky tests from the system.

• Open-source: WebDriverIO is open-source with no company managing or making decisions for future implementation. All the new advancements made on the tool are purely based on the tester’s interest and the community’s benefit.

WebDriverIO is a good tool to use especially if the tester has a background in Selenium or Appium. It is free to download and expands through multiple devices which is always a desired feature.

Check here – Selenium vs Webdriverio

SikuliX

SikuliX is an OpenCV-powered test automation software used for testing GUI or even functional testing if required. The software is open-source, free to use, and is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Highlighting features:

• Image recognition: The tool comes integrated with the OpenCV library that can perform image recognition on GUI elements to identify, classify, and test them efficiently. This is a great method to work with when source code is not available to get the identifiers.

• Multiple language support: SikuliX supports multiple languages to work on including Python, Ruby, Java, and JavaScript. Running RobotFramework text scripts is also supported.

• Supports emulator on desktop: Since SikuliX does not support any mobile device (app), it can still be used to test mobile applications by running emulators on desktops. Testers can use tools like Testsigma for the same.

• Supports user actions: SikuliX supports user actions on the GUI elements including mouse actions and keyboard inputs. The tool can also be used in multi-monitor environments and for remote systems as well.

• Multiple execution methods: SikuliX GUI testing tool can be used either through SikuliX IDE in which the main method of work is by interacting with GUI elements or through regular IDE (like IntelliJ) in which programming scripts are required in a programming language of your choice. Both methods are fine to work with and the decision comes down to personal preference only.

SikuliX saves a lot of time for testers due to its ability to detect and identify GUI elements. It is one of the few GUI testing tools that comes integrated with such AI technology. However, SikuliX should only be used in the beginning stage of the application and specifically during the development or initial testing phase. SikuliX should not be relied upon with production-level testing or testing big complex applications that cater to millions of users.

Playwright

Playwright is an open-source library developed by Microsoft to automate browser tasks on all the browsers developed on modern rendering engines such as Blink and WebKit. The GUI tool can be run in the headless or non-headless mode for executing end-to-end tests, unit tests, or GUI tests as per requirement.

Highlighting features:

• Cross-platform and cross-language: Playwright can be used on all browsers, all the major platforms (Windows, Linux, and macOS), and using popular programming languages such as Java, Python, and Javascript.

• Test mobile web: Playwright can be used to test mobile web on Android (only Chrome) and Safari on iOS.

• Autowait: Playwright implements auto-wait functionality that waits for an element to appear on the page before executing any actions on it. Hence, building non-flaky and resilient tests.

• Multiple everything: Playwright claims to work on the “multiple everything” concept. This means the testers can create tests that work on multiple users, multiple tabs, and multiple origins. A single test can have multiple scenarios for multiple users as well.

• Browser contexts: The tool while executing the tests creates a new browser profile called browser context. While it takes an additional few milliseconds, it ensures that there are no external factors affecting the tests or performance and the results are accurate with perfect metrics.

Playwright is a powerful and lightweight end-to-end test framework which is often compared to Cypress due to its prowess. It boasts more than 68k stars, 145k users, and 3.7k forks on its official repository which is a remarkable achievement.

Check here – Robot Framework vs Playwright

How to Build GUI Test Automation Framework?

Sure! Here are the steps to develop a GUI test automation framework, explained in a conversational tone:

Step 1: Set the source control to function correctly:

To begin building an automated test framework, it’s important to establish a solid foundation with a well-organized test layout. This allows the QA team to easily reference and reuse tests even when modifications are introduced, ensuring the stability of the test suite.

Step 2: Get acquainted with the software:

In this step, the team goes beyond the basic understanding of the software and conducts investigative testing. By diving deeper into the system’s workings and flow, they gain valuable knowledge that helps them create name-mapping features. These features help identify the objects within the GUI that users will interact with during testing.

Step 3: Choose and organize an environment for testing and gathering information:

Here, the testers compile the necessary information and organize the testing environment. They also design the system configurations executed in various domains, ensuring comprehensive coverage.

Step 4: Initiate a Smoke Test:

A smoke test is essential before implementing thorough verifications and utilities, focusing on critical components of the application to ensure its stability. If the test fails, the system must be repaired before thorough testing, as continuing without stability wastes time.

Step 5: Design new functionalities for on-screen use:

It is essential to provide shared utilities for basic UI operations, such as menu navigation and text input fields. These are the foundation for tests that can be merged with other components.

Step 6: Create and handle verifications:

Verifications are essential for testing, and it is important to have an organized method for setting up and sharing them. Separate input utilities should accept the information obtained to combine components.

Step 7: Prepare the mechanism for making an entry in the log and create reports:

The final stage of establishing an automated testing system is reporting, which involves entering data into a log and creating reports. It is important to document all process steps and deliver clear and intelligible signals to technical and non-technical users. The ultimate objective is to create a standardized reporting mechanism.

Following these steps, you can develop a robust GUI test automation framework that enables efficient and effective testing.

Summary

The GUI of an application is the first thing that a user sees before interacting with the functionality. It is very important for an organization and developers to make it fool-proof so that the user does not uncover any bugs. This can only be achieved using GUI testing through a solid GUI testing tool.

In this post, we went through 9 top GUI testing tool that allows automation to speed up the process and eliminate manual work. All these tools are popular and offer different things for a tester. For instance, some like to be codeless and author tests in English while others excel in record-and-reply.

These are not listed as priorities and there is no one software to recommend. Whatever suits you and your requirements is best for you. I hope this list will help you decide on your next GUI testing tool speedily and in a more clear way. Thank you for giving this post your valuable time.