Release Notes

Improved – We’ve updated the Log4j library version to 2.16.0 to prevent potential issues reported in CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-45046.

Improved – We’ve worked on overall cloud stability to prevent potential issues and make the product even more secure and reliable.

Improved – We are working on overall cloud stability to prevent potential issues and make the product even more secure and reliable.

Fixed – It could happen that after uploading over 1 000 of your input files to the application, you couldn't see the latest ones.

Improved – In this release, we’ve strongly focused on improving security to prevent potential issues and make the product even more secure, stable, and reliable.

Fixed – It could happen that after updating devices up to Android 12, at some very rare occasions the video from the test recording was missing.

Fixed – For the concurrency plans, we have changed the message for unsubscribing your plan. Now, the message says that in case you want to terminate your subscription, it will remain active until the end of the paid period.

Fixed – During the iOS automated testing, it might happen that the video recording stopped after changing the device orientation although the test itself was still running.

Fixed – We have unified the naming of Live Testing across the BitBar application.

Fixed – You could see an example of local HTML file in How to Run Tests with the SecureTunnel local HTML. However, this option was not available

Fixed – When you ran another test in the same project, the test run creator didn’t show the previous settings.

Fixed – When trying to abort running sessions, it could happen that the Abort button didn’t work.

Fixed – The warning: Your browser isn't officially supported by BitBar Cloud… could have not been visible in the open window. In some cases, BitBar doesn’t show the Your browser isn't officially supported… message right away, and it appeared only after you started working with the page.

Fixed – When you tried to choose a device for your test, only after opening a proper group you could see the correct number of available devices.

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Fixed– In some cases, BitBar included user sessions on dedicated devices in the total number of concurrent user sessions your license allows. This could decrease the number of concurrent test sessions on regular (non-dedicated) devices your team could run.

Fixed– The “Don't show again” check box in the message about unsupported browsers didn’t work (this message warns a user that BitBar Cloud doesn’t support the browser in which they are working).

Fixed– The Projects > <test-run> > Device Sessions screen was missing the Sort button.

Fixed – In some cases, after recording a long list of actions during live testing, the recorder page could have stopped responding if you tried refreshing it.

Fixed – In Create Automated Test, the Custom test run parameters input field of the Additional Settings didn't wrap long values so they were only partially visible.

Fixed – For better clarity, the screenshots you take during the live testing session no longer have the tooltip saying Undefined when you hover the mouse pointer over them.

Fixed – Using screen rotation during a live testing session could have resulted in the broken video recording.

Improvement – For a credit card payment, When you cancel your BitBar plan, the cancellation doesn't happen immediately but will be effective at the end of the current billing period, so you can still use BitBar until that date.

Fixed – In some cases, the Unsubscribe button remained enabled even after the plan had already been canceled.

Fixed – After the session was timed-out, you might have observed a triple auto-retrial of the session. That could happen even if the error causing difficulties had a high probability of recurrence.

Fixed – Using Secure Tunnel could result in the inability to open any internal website even though the status was switched to On.

Fixed – In some cases, when you tried cancelling the Live Testing connection attempt, a connection error pop-up could appear if the connecting process took too long

We have also worked on a new feature for BitBar Private and Public Cloud to extend the scope of its operating possibilities.

Improved – In this release, we’ve strongly focused on updating internal libraries to prevent potential issues and make the product even more secure, stable, and reliable.

Improved – For live testing, you can now use Android App Bundles (AAB) instead of the individual apps, which makes your work easier and faster.

Improved – For live testing, on the Past Sessions list we have clarified the status message for sessions that have never started and have been excluded for some reason.

Improved – We have improved support for Flutter iOS tests.

Fixed – You might have faced issues with creating a device group with selected devices for automated testing. BitBar could have failed creating this group, the created group could have been empty, or, if the group had devices in it, you might have experienced issues with running the tests.

Fixed – The tunnel might have not worked for users whose email address contains +.

Fixed – In certain cases, BitBar did not show the actual screen on the tested device during a live testing.

Improved – BitBar now transfers sounds from tested iOS devices to your browser during iOS live testing. The recorded .mp4 file has an audio track as well.

Fixed – In certain situations, the screenshots comparison screen didn’t reflect changes in a session name.

Fixed – An issue after the live testing session: In some cases, sessions for users with time-based plans were free of charge.

Fixed – An issue with the Android live testing: In certain cases, the CPU and Memory usage charts didn't appear after the testing session was over.

You can now change device session names:

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You can also do this in your client-side Appium and Selenium scripts. This makes it easier to control the devices your automated tests use.

As an alternative, you can also do this through APIs:

`curl -X POST -u {api-key}: https://cloud.bitbar.com/api/v2/users/{userId}/projects/{projectId}/runs/{runId}/device-sessions/{deviceSessionId} -d 'name=new-session-name'
— or —
curl -X POST -u {api-key}: https://cloud.bitbar.com/api/v2/users/{userId}/device-sessions/{deviceSessionId} -d 'name=new-session-name'

Fixed – An issue on the Create Automated Test screen: an error could occur if you try changing the OS Type after filling other fields.

Fixed – After a test was completed, some of the Desktop devices could stay in the Testing Sub-state.

Fixed – After applying filters to a device group, you might see an error message.

Due to low usage and maintenance concerns, AI Testbot has been removed from the product.

Advanced settings > Test user credentials in automated tests relate directly to AI Testbot, therefore we’ve decided to hide them.

Improvement – A new SmartBear Secure Tunnel enables you to create and run mobile tests for web services running in local networks.

Fixed – After a user shared their project, a new project owner was unable to get test files.

Fixed – Running a Client Side Appium test on a device with an Android or iOS version earlier than the one your tested app required caused the test to hang.

Fixed – Running an XCUITest with two XCODE_ONLY_TESTING parameters caused the device session to freeze.

Fixed – Appium Client Side tests didn't start on iOS devices.

Fixed – In some cases, BitBar failed to upload files to the test device during live testing.

We’ve also updated a few internal libraries to speed up video streaming, improve overall performance, and to eliminate potential bottlenecks and vulnerabilities.

Improved — We’ve updated the streaming libraries to provide smooth and hitch-free video transfer from Android and iOS test devices.

Fixed — In certain cases, the Session Details > Commands screen displayed time units for command duration.

Fixed — For automated tests, it was impossible to set timeouts longer than 60 minutes.

We’ve also fixed some other minor issues reported by our customers.

We’ve rephrased a couple of user messages to help you understand issues in a better way.

We’ve also updated a few internal libraries to avoid possible issues and to make the product even more stable and reliable.

Better support for test result formats — Earlier, BitBar reported an error such as “ Failure processing test run results (The JUnit file is not a valid XML) ...” when a test framework generated an .xml file with test results and the file format slightly differed from the expected one. Now BitBar is smart enough to understand these differences.

Fixed — Clearing the Search box in the Files Library screen did not work properly.

Fixed — The Apply filters button on the Devices screen displayed a wrong number of active filters.

We’ve made a couple of performance improvements and updated internal libraries to make the product more stable and eliminate potential vulnerabilities.

This version introduces a new dialog box to help you understand who is running automated tests in your team. Run an automated test and click the icon in the menu on the left:

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We’ve also improved internal libraries to make the product even more stable and eliminate potential vulnerabilities.

Our records say that the Jira integration has not been very popular, therefore we decided to hide it for the time being. We are planningto re-introduce it sometime later. If you have any suggestions on how the integration might work, please share your thoughts with us. You can explore and get ideas from other SmartBear products like CrossBrowserTesting, TestComplete, ReadyAPI or Zephyr Enterprise.

Fixed —BitBar failed to update the files to be uploaded to a device in the test runs which use server-side frameworks.

Fixed — When you created an automated test run and selected devices for it, the Use existing device option was selected in the creation wizard.

Fixed — An Appium Client-Side session could fail when processing the test results.

Fixed — In certain cases, BitBar failed to start a tested application on an Android device that used the Appium framework.

Fixed —BitBar could remove existing the devices from a group when you added new devices to that group.

Fixed — In some cases, the Device List didn’t display some device properties.

Fixed — In certain cases, the Timeline functionality could use different date/time formats for messages.

Fixed — Running too many automated tests parallelly could cause delays in sending notifications via email.

We’ve also improved internal libraries to make the product even more stable and secure. As part of this update, the Open file in a new tab option in the Device Session > Control Panel > Output Files tab has become obsolete and has been deleted.

We’ve also improved response contents in some API operations.

New feature — A new Abort device session command to help you abort the test run on individual devices keeping it running on other devices. You can find the new command on the Projects > Device Sessions screen:

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Fixed — In certain cases, BitBar was unable to show the video stream from a device.

We’ve also improved internal libraries to make the product even more secure and stable.

Support for authentication over the Auth0 authentication provider in BitBar Private Cloud. This means you can sign on to BitBar using your Auth0 account:

Fixed – Selection made in the “My Account > My Preferences > Logs Theme” dialog box had no effect.

Fixed – An unexpected error might be reported to the script log if you switched between device sessions in active test runs.

Fixed – Some error messages could expose implementation details.

Fixed – The Security Center of BitBar Cloud displayed the Multi-Factor Authentication tab, though MFA was removed from the Cloud edition some time earlier. The tab has been hidden.

We’ve also updated some third-party libraries to eliminate potential performance and security issues.

Fixed - An error occurred when you tried to create a test run from some sample files.

Fixed - In some cases, styles for notification boxes loaded with a delay.

Fixed - Sometimes an error could occur after updating the password through the “Forget password?” procedure.

We’ve also updated a few internal libraries to make the product even more reliable and secure.

The Projects screen is now updated automatically on changes made to the data it displays. No need to refresh the page manually anymore.

The API Key setting is now masked by default. To view it, click the new button next to it:

Click this button quickly to preview the key, and click and hold it for a longer time to make the key visible permanently.

Logs from iOS devices didn’t have highlighting.

You can export the “device usage” and “OS usage” statistics to a file. The resulting file didn’t contain all the records the Dashboard displayed.

Buttons on the Dashboard were misaligned on some screen resolutions.

We’ve also fixed a few typos in the UI.

In this minor release, we have fixed the error that occurred when deleting users and resources from access groups.

Also, we’ve updated internal algorithms and infrastructure to improve performance.

Fixed: BitBar Swagger UI could not execute the POST and DELETE requests.

Fixed: In Admin mode, the Test Timeout option accepted non-digit characters.

Fixed: Devices that user A was using in their test run were in the waiting state and not accessible for user B. This issue applied only to users with the same priority level.

Fixed: Setting None for Test time-out period caused unexpected behavior when creating automated tests.

Admin users can now limit accepted file types to be uploaded per account via the UI. This gives account owners an opportunity to deny the possibility of uploading potentially harmful file types. This is especially interesting for private and enterprise device clouds where strict company policies need to be followed.

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Minor UI fixes:

The link to Swagger on the Fork the Code panel was outdated.

The BitBar left-side panel now shows the number of ongoing and available device sessions that can be run concurrently. See Parallel sessions for details.

You can also use the /accounts/{accountId}/concurrency-status to get details about concurrent device sessions. See Get device concurrency slots for details.

The name_notlike filter parameter now applies to filtering devices. You can use it to exclude the specified device filter group from the query result. For details, see Exclude a device filter group.

Admin users can now limit accepted file types to be uploaded per account. For teams or users with multiple sub-users, it is possible to limit which file types are allowed to be used when uploading files to BitBar. This gives account owners an opportunity to deny possibility to upload potentially harmful file types. This is especially interesting for private and enterprise device clouds where strict company policies need to be followed.

When choosing devices for a test session from Projects > Add new test run > Choose devices, the selected devices were not highlighted.

The BitBar Demo project showed extra items: Add new test run, Retry, and Remove

New BitBar API timeout parameter. Use the testTimeLimit parameter to customize the timeout for a dedicated device, not just a global user timeout. For details, see Set the device timeout.

New users now have to finish the registration within 7 days, otherwise they will be automatically removed.

The Dashboard now shows test run performance by device. The data is shown in the Device Usage Statistics and Device OS Usage Statistics widgets.

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Fixed: api/v2/admin/users/user_id/account/roles?limit=0&sort=name_a returned 500 Internal Server Error when the user had no roles assigned.

Fixed: Uploading files by specifying only a file name without extension assigned the .ipa extension to the file regardless of its original extension.

Fixed: Issues with Xcode 11.5 devices in Live Testing.

New Live Testing view:

After finishing a live test session, you are automatically moved to the Past Sessions view.

All actions performed over a device are now stored in the Media widget of the Past Sessions view. You can also download them as a JSON file from the Control panel widget.

New BitBar API exclusion filter. Use the name_notlike filter parameter for all output file resources to exclude the specified file from the query result. For details, see the Filter device session files.

An internal server error occurred when uploading an .apk file.

BitBar Cloud introduces support for iOS 13.5.

Updated device tiles on the Devices screen. They now show display resolution and size and have buttons to quickly start a test using the selected device:

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The Admin panel now has the Files view which shows all files used in tests and projects and allows to download and mark the files as save or infected, as well as shows a file's state.

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The Forgot my password option was unavailable for some users.

BitBar now has Security Center, where you can manage your account security settings:

Your account usage details can now be accessed by navigating to > Usage Details from the main toolbar.

Billing history can now be accessed by navigating to > Billing History from the main toolbar.

The Device Details modal is now more interactive. You can start a live, automated, or AI-driven test by using the selected device right from the modal.

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You can view the last 10 actions performed over a device during live testing.

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New past session details view.

Changes to the API. The device API provides now additional information on what testing methods are supported by each device. The testing types supported by BitBar device cloud include MANUAL, ROBOT and AUTOMATIC, which relate to live testing, AI Testbot, and automated testing. This information is especially useful when picking a device over API for automated or AI Testbot testing purposes. The user can avoid picking a device that does not support the wanted testing method.

Security fixes and improvements. There was an issue where a malicious user could have used our service to annoy a third-party email inbox. This is not possible anymore after this update.

We continue working on backend changes to allow further integration to other SmartBear services and tools. More on these later this year when we get these integrations out to our users!

The Control Panel widget of the Past sessions screen has been improved to show essential device information.

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The value of the stateChengeTime property of the GET /api/v2/admin/devices operation is now passed to API.

Users were unable to rename projects.

Admins could not create new frameworks, and then save them.

The demo project was visible after the first project was created by a user.

Various minor UI fixes.

New Projects view. It is now more informative and interactive:

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You can now easily copy your test run configuration to later use it in BitBar API. To do this, expand a test run and click Show configuration.

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Past manual sessions are now named after the device used in the session.

Email notifications now do not have user names in their text.

Non-admin users can now get to the device session results.

The Dashboard now shows the shared project data for non-owners.

Performance improvements. We moved from AMD to Common JS, so the BitBar UI is now faster and more responsive.

The Dashboard now shows the results of shared projects along with the results of your own projects.

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New Device Session view. The view shows live testing details, such as the device used during the session, files uploaded to the device, screenshots and a video recording of the session, device performance graph, and other details.

We strengthened up security. You can now set how long your BitBar session will last before you will be logged out. You can set the session timeout in My Account > Security > Change session timeout. The shorter your session is, the greater the security will be.

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Support for multiple Chromedriver versions. This is important for whoever does Appium browser or hybrid application testing on our devices. Now the latest Chromedriver is automatically setup for every device and version of Chrome.

We had to rewrite how we extract results from iOS test runs! XCode11 changed where and how test results are stored to which we had to adapt. Instead of directories with subdirectories and separate files, everything is now stored to one file.

Improvements to monitoring our internal servers. These include private cloud and public cloud servers on which you are running your tests.

We moved to the new Projects view for good now. We have received some improvement requests on the view that we’ll follow while modifying it.

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After some considerations, we decided to remove our integration with AWS Marketplace. It was possible to purchase the BitBar service through AWS Marketplace and have BitBar as part of your monthly AWS bill. Unfortunately, this did not really work as we expected.

We have started to try out changes in our trial user experience. We have shortened the path of trial users in getting to start their first test. Mostly the new funnel happens through our Dashboard view.

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ChromeDriver was updated on our devices allowing you to run Selenium and hybrid tests with the latest Chrome browser version on our Android devices.

We have installed and updated Mono, Nunit and nuget packages to our Android and iOS environments. This should help out all of you running C# tests in our service.

Additional improvements to the create automated test view, with more clues for users to follow. Our latest efforts on improving the visuals of our UI are really making a difference.

On some iOS test runs video recording was not working properly and this got fixed.

Our API was published on SwaggerHub so you can browse and try it out. Check the documentation here: https://app.swaggerhub.com/apis/smartbear/bitbar-cloud_api/2.88.0

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With Apple updating their iOS environment, we again updated our Xcodes to the latest 11.3 version.

Sample applications directly in the tool to get started! We added application and test files for the most common frameworks. To get started just use the files we’ve already uploaded and click on start testing!

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The new project view is brought out to the public! You should switch to this new view and start using it. Also, we’d love to hear from you about what you like or don’t in the new view.

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At the top of the screen, you can find the five last test runs followed by all your projects with all of their test runs. Opening a test run gives the basic run information with links to results, device run, and additional information about the run.

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Improvements in getting started with automated testing. E.g. when starting with Appium server-side tests, you can now start with ready samples straight from the new test run creator.

Android and iOS environments got updated with the latest Android SDK. We did this to make it easier to run Flutter based tests on these environments. We have the sample coming out any day now with the respect Flutter framework also becoming visible to the public cloud.

Our AI Testbot got updated to support the latest iOS versions! Give the bot a chance to exploration test your application!

We retired two unused frameworks from our UI, Calabash and AppCrawler. These are still available for some time over our API, but you can’t start runs with these using our UI.

We are working on bringing two new more modern frameworks at the beginning of the year, but more on these as we get them done.

Server-side desktop browser runs now include execution video recordings. With this improvement you’ll see what actually happened during your test execution. Include the created video to bug reports for showing what really happened during the test execution!

Flutter is now supported on Android and iOS environments. If you already have Flutter test suites go ahead and try them out. We’re working on providing some samples to share for those who are still getting started with Flutter. More on these as we get them online!

Plenty of small changes on our test run creator view! There’s more step by step documentation, graphics and guides on how to proceed. We’re still adding extra guides so everyone gets to start a server-side test execution.

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For all Ruby users, we have updated our Ruby client for easier interaction with the cloud.

A totally new server-side JavaScript sample. The steps to use the sample are the same as with other server or cloud-side tests. You need to zip your tests and upload them to BitBar for execution.

zip sample-test.zip \
  package.json \
  package-lock.json \
  run-tests.sh \
  test/specs/main.js \
  wdio.conf.js

Python3 is now available on iOS and Android environments. If you haven’t started yet, you should start converting your Python tests to run under Python3 as the previous version is getting deprecated after the new year!

We have had remote USB connection available for some time already. In the public cloud, this is available for dedicated devices while in private and on-premise setups it is of course up to the cloud administrators to decide how this feature is made available.

Today we introduced support for multiple ADB clients. This is now available for selected private cloud customers or public cloud customers with dedicated frameworks. Please get in contact with our sales if you need this.

You can now in command line parameters define which version of ADB should be used for the connection, using the -adbversion command line parameter.

For detailed information and the latest build, check out the remote client repository.

Improvements in our OWASP path. While we took Kubernetes into use some time ago, we noticed that some security features we already had implemented previously, were not there anymore. With this release, we brought those changes to our Kubernetes setup too.

Apple has kept us busy with new iOS updates, so we are bringing support for the latest iOS13.2 out with this release too.

We fixed some issues to continue supporting Akaze libraries on our latest Linux images on the public cloud.

Our Capabilities Creator now supports also configuring our Appium capabilities. No easier way of getting started with running client-side tests to real devices on our public cloud!

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iOS test runs now support also Appium version 1.15.

We made the test run creator easier to use for first-timers! We’ll continue making changes to this view in the coming releases to make it super easy for everyone to start an automated test in our cloud!

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Whenever you create a new test run, you can see how you could do the same using our API. To make this easier we have a code block generator in the UI, from which you can copy-paste the required information to your command line or continuous integration service.

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Our samples repository got updated with a guide on how to create a server-side desktop browser test run! This is the perfect approach for running fast, secure and robust desktop browser tests. Check out the samples on GitHub.

For some time we have been working on a new projects view that provides users with more information about the device test execution at first glance. You can start using it by enabling beta features from under “My account”. Here’s what’s waiting to come out as we iron out remaining issues.

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Private and on-premise cloud admins get an easier way of maintaining team users. It’s now possible to move account users out of a managed account into own accounts that can be further managed.

Our Timeline functionality gets an overhaul to showing information tooltips on what has happened during the test execution and thumbnails of the screenshots taken during the execution.

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Android Appium gets updated to version 1.15.

iOS testing saw the support for Mojave and the latest Xcode! We’ve had iOS13 support on the public cloud already after last release for the native testing frameworks. Now we bring support to the remaining frameworks.

We have Kubernetes on production! All private and on-premise customers, as you’ll upgrade to newest versions of our cloud, you’ll get a Kubernetes installation if only supported by your infrastructure.

This will provide you with easier and faster upgrades in the future. Also you’ll be able to run a newer version next to your existing installation to assure everything is working as you wish, before making the shift to the new instance!

With this update, we also continue being the only cloud-native real device cloud service out there supporting the setup of device clouds in any customer environment.

With Apple’s yearly new device publication, we started on working new iOS device support. Unfortunately with this release we only got the environment working so new devices will come with the next release.

Switching of our payment service provider to Stripe. We were thinking of this already for some time and finally did the change over the summer. Customers will benefit from improved public cloud prices where we’ll be able to provide better deals on real devices and browsers.

We have implemented a number of security improvements again to our service. With our environment already one of the most secure enterprise grade cloud solution, we improved things like password strength requirements, support for multi factor authentication (MFA), upgrading to newer libraries and removing old versions.

Many of the added features are also such that they can be enabled in whole or in part for enterprise installations. For example, multifactor authentication might be required only for administrators but not for other users.

Public cloud users can enable MFA on their accounts under ‘My Account’ and Security tab.

UI preparations for bringing a new UI layout. More of this when the new UI gets out in following releases.

Bringing automated setup support for other cloud service providers like Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Azure etc. While AWS is definitely the cloud mostly used by our customers, we see other cloud providers gaining traction and want to be ready supporting customers scale their testing cloud on other cloud providers. Obviously here too, customer specific security requirements are taken into account!

We have enabled client-side Selenium desktop browser testing support to all our customers on the public cloud. To get started, take a look how to update your desired capabilities with the capability creator. Once that is good, simply launch your tests against BitBar browsers!

AI Testbot is now available in the UI as the default fully automated testing solution. Just import your application, create new test run and wait for results!

Release of the Selenium desktop browser capability creator in our GitHub repo. This gives you a glimpse of what is coming out very shortly to general availability! Selected customers are already testing this.

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Improved support for LDAP integration. This is of special interest for on-premise cloud setups integrated to customers’ LDAP.

We restructured our samples repository to make it easier to find appropriate samples. There are so many different programming languages and frameworks for both Android and iOS that having these all constantly available for new users is time consuming. We’ll continue refactoring to make the samples still better.

Some might have already observed we’re working on bringing desktop browser support to our online service. For this purpose we created acapabilities creator. Check it out and get in touch if you want to run your browser tests using our cloud.

We did an integration to Ranorex Automation tool to run both Android or iOS tests against our cloud. We don’t have this enabled on our public cloud but please contact our sales if you are interested in this.

Introduction of AI Testbot for iOS, but over API only. This allows you to start an AI test run using iOS devices.

With the previous release we introduced API for device-specific cleanup functionality where admins are able to specify by device what steps and procedures are taken for device cleaning. While the API supported all features, we now added the missing UI to simplify making changes.

A boost in strengthening our back end to better support third-party solution providers to integrate with the BitBar device cloud. For tool and service providers that want to offer some add-on service to customers running tests on BitBar have now a smoother way of publishing their service for BitBar.

Some may have noticed we have introduced new devices to the device list. Even though everyone is now able to see these, access to these is enabled during May.

Our remote USB feature, which was released last January for on-premise customers is now available also for Private and Public clouds. For more information on how to use this check out theGitHub repository. To get remote USB access to public cloud devices, you’ll need to request a dedicated device.

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File library allows you to upload multiple files to cloud at the same time.

Security update with new login approach when session to service times out. Previously when user’s session timed out, user’s page and test results stayed visible under a login dialog. After this release user is moved to the login screen when the session times out.

Project and device group sharing were brought to the UI. Also for all resources shared with you, you’ll see a sharing icon showing the resource was shared by someone to you. To not disclose cloud users’s emails, when sharing resources you’ll always receive the same message regardless if you mistyped the share recipient email.

We’ve had since the beginning of times support for running tests on the first available device. Until now the used device may have been hidden behind all the skipped devices. Not anymore! The selected device is presented first whereas skipped devices are presented after the used devices.

Our company branding and web site have been updated. This branding update is also visible in the receipts we send out from our cloud service!

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Our Appium client-side broker now supports additional capabilities that allow you to use either different frameworks on BitBarbitbar_frameworkId or a different version of the Appium server bitbar_appiumVersion. For more information on how these work, please check our Appium capabilities.

Sharing resources between cloud users. It is now possible to share e.g. files to other cloud users. This is perfect when a new application is uploaded to the cloud and needs to be tested by a team of exploratory testers or even manual testers. Once you share a file with other users, every user is able to use the same resource and be sure testing is carried on the correct version of an application.

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Until now if you wanted to view any text files you needed to download the file to local machine and view it there. There’s now a new button in the UI that allows to open the files in a new browser tab and view log files there. This is a lot easier approach to going through and searching the logs.

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Client-side Appium uses now the same apps as visible in the file browser UI. There is now only one approach to uploading files to cloud and it works for both client and server-side executions. For more information check Appium client side documentation.

We’re bringing 3D secure to our online purchase process. As an online service provider we want our customers to feel safe about their online purchases. 3D secure is an added security protocol created on top of credit and debit card purchases.

We also tightened security on the count of allowed failed login attempts to the public cloud. We know forgetting passwords happens, but now we’ll lock your account after five failed attempts. You’ll then need to either request your administrator to unlock your account, or proceed to changing your password. Keep your email credentials safe!

There are some other important security changes we did on the back end side that are transparent to the end-users, but greatly improves your safety!

You can now enable receiving as notification your monthly plan receipt on the public cloud (or you can have it sent directly to someone else).

In addition to getting notifications on the receipt, you can also get notified when you are about to go over your monthly plan. Note that this same is available as Slack notification!

We are trying out some changes in our registration process. New users, be prepared for whole new experience! ;-)

Plenty of UI changes especially for admin users. Better handling of tables and dashboard!

There are new API resources allowing users to share resources in cloud. Using the API, users are able to create access groups and include users and resources to that group. Users in the same group can access the resources in that group.

For now shareable resources include: projects, files, file sets and device groups.

Looking at the usage, we’ll probably implement some UI for this so all cloud users will be able to use this without having to use an API.

With last release we added support for remote USB connection to our devices. You are now able to get our latest remote client from the public GitHub repository.

Finally but not least there are plenty of UI tweaks that make the handling of sub users nicer and just looks good!

There is a new filtering criteria for Public cloud devices. You can now search for devices based on their physical location. Currently available locations are EU or US. When doing eg. manual or client side Appium testing, the physical location of the device may be important as you want to avoid extra network latencies to the device.

Cloud is now able to display the device screen and logs while test execution is ongoing for Appium server side test runs. When a test run starts a new button appears on the device test view allowing you to see the test execution. To enable this functionality, you need to enable the Beta functionality on, from under your preferences.

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Clicking on that button, opens you new view showing the device screen and the ongoing test execution. Note that you are not able to interact with the device but only view the execution.

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Our device cloud now supports creating remote USB connection from your local machine to dedicated Android or iOS devices in BitBar cloud. Using the remote device client, you can connect to any of your dedicated device in the cloud and access it like it would be connected locally.

This allows you to eg. run tests against your dedicated devices in cloud using proprietary testing tools.

The client is built using Java, so you’ll need to have a working Java runtime environment and as we’re using the latest ADB server on our side, you might need to update yours to get the connection up.

Invite users to your account to make your team more effective in mobile application testing.

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Back end preparations for our new remote connection service. This will allow you to connect to our devices in the cloud as if these were connected directly to your own machine. This will be available for all dedicated devices, iOS and Android.

iOS12 support on all public cloud devices. There were already some devices we upgraded to iOS12 and made them available. Remaining i-devices are being updated to iOS12 and enabled on cloud.

Public cloud moved inside a more secure AWS private cloud environment. Public cloud is now running with same setup as our private clouds!

New users get a landing page to get started with using our cloud solution. This is an easy approach to starting AI testing, Manual testing or an automated test script run in cloud.

Many users didn’t notice the single sign on buttons we had on the login page so we made them more explicit with specific buttons.

BitBar Gradle plugin was updated to allow setting test run timeout values. By default test timeout is set to 30 minutes. When creating a test run manually you can set this timeout in the advanced settings of the test run.

To ease the use of uploading and managing files you upload to BitBar cloud, we added a new button at the top bar where you can at any time go and edit the files you have in the cloud.

iOS performance data is available for all iOS test runs now.

Admin dashboard customization gets out of beta for all admins to enjoy. Go remove or add the widgets you want to remove or bring back!

As we believe the best way to use our service is through our API, we’re now providing an even easier access to using it by providing API access with Swagger. You need to be logged in to access the API descriptions. Once in you can even try out the API commands in the web UI. Access Swagger from My Account > API Integration > Open Swagger.

SSO using your Azure Active Directory credentials!

A long waited change for testers using Ruby, eg. many Calabash testers. When you load your Gemfile with your test package for server side execution, our system will handle gems installation for you. This allows you to use the same gems and versions you are using locally.

We added timestamps to our console logs - this helps you to find possible errors easier as you know when something went wrong. While debugging can be a pain this should make it just a little easier.

A ton of bigger and smaller UI changes and improvements! Overall we have improved spacing and locations of icons in the UI. It’s small changes but really makes a difference. Additionally we added some new perks that we think you’ll love.

iOS XCUITests are again automatically taking screenshots. With previous Apple Xcode update automatic screenshot capturing was removed from Xcode, but many of our customers were really liking that feature. For this reason we have now enabled it for XCUITest runs.

Users can delete their accounts from our cloud. This will remove any user related data that was uploaded by the user to our cloud. For more information check Delete Account.

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Improvements to Public Cloud iOS Appium test runs. We had some issues with runs not starting that should get fixed with this change. This does not affect private or on-premise setups where this was not an issue. The approach to run tests is slightly different in these environments.

BitBar Build service gets released for dedicated environments. This is an API service for creating and launching iOS (or Android) builds on dedicated hardware with the possibility of running simulator tests after a successful build. End user has access to all build artifacts and logs for possible trouble shooting.

Our Monitoring service environment was updated with same Appium version as used on the testing side. Moving existing tests for monitoring purposes is now straight forward.

For Private clouds we updated the admin dashboard with some new analytics about cloud device distribution with respect to market device distributions. This is a great way for admins to follow which devices need to be updated with newer versions of operating system to follow market shares.

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This shows our staging environment’s Android, iOS and OpenGL distributions in the cloud and in the wild.

Appium broker is now served from https://appium.bitbar.com/hub/wd. Make sure to update your client side tests with the new endpoint!

API documentation was updated. The online documentation now shows which values can be queried and sorted.

Public cloud is updated to support latest iOS 11.2.1 and the flagship iPhoneX device. The device is added during the following days.

Manual testing session supports now filtering of the logs. Only logs visible can be later downloaded.

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With our new manual testing released last time we forgot to include the button for changing the device orientation. Thanks for the feedback, we now brought it back.

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iOS manual testing is available for on-premise setups. It behaves pretty close to same as the Android manual testing.

Plenty of UI updates that are best described in our blog by our front end developers. Just go check that out to see all cool stuff.

New user dashboard. If you read the above blog post, you must have noticed the new dashboard.

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As cloud admin it is important to know how the devices in cloud are distributed by eg. operating system or API versions. New admin dashboard widgets give you exactly this!

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Manual testing has been redone from scratch. We are true believers of test automation, but there are valid cases for doing manual testing too. With our new manual testing implementation you’ll want to do manual checks just because it’s so much fun. Even when using shared public cloud devices app feedback is great. For on-premise customers, responsiveness can further be improved. We are increasing the number of supported devices gradually while we make sure each device supports the new solution.

Our manual testing has the extra benefit it can be integrated into other tools like eg. IDEs. If you are interested in knowing more about such an option please get in touch with us through [email protected]

Currently manual testing is enabled for Android devices. For iOS device support a dedicated device is required. For getting access to iOS devices please contact our [email protected].

Devices view and device groups. Last release brought a new devices view and now we updated the device groups handling page. Full documentation is described at Device Groups.

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iOS test runs are now showing performance data similar to what has been available for Android test runs. This shows CPU and RAM usage of the device during test execution.

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Introduced Appium 1.7.1 to Android side test runs. On iOS we are running version 1.7.0. There is no major difference between the two. If for any reason you need to run Appium 1.6 or 1.5, it is possible on our Android server side runs. You need to select which version to use in you run-tests.sh script. If you want to take 1.7.1 into use check your run-tests.sh script is updated to call new version!

# start the Appium server
echo "Starting Appium ..."
appium-1.7 --log-no-colors --log-timestamp

Customers with dedicated devices see these as first devices in the devices view. It’s easier to start using those.

A whole new devices view! You probably noticed that from previous small screenshot, but it now looks fabulous. Select the filters to suite your test requirements and create a new device group by dragging the selected devices on top of the device groups on right hand side.

iOS11 support on all iOS side test frameworks. Appium support was already there but now also Calabash support for iOS11 was introduced. Of course you can also use any other (or own) test framework by installing it at the beginning of the test run. More informationhere.

Cleanup of Safari browser (history and cache) after test runs. Even if we do these cleanups you should not leave any open sessions from your test sessions. For improved security you should go for dedicated devices. Sales can help you with these at [email protected].

We brought a place holder for our Monitoring service to the cloud UI. This page will get updated during the end of the year to include creating and viewing basic checks.

Additional options for Slack and HipChat notifications. In addition to getting notification from test runs, you can now also get notifications about cloud status or news about new devices included into cloud.

Private and On-premise administrator get more control on what and how to inform end users. The admin menu has a totally new menu item to control to whom, what information and how is sent. This is a great way of letting users know about the addition of new devices or frameworks to run tests on.

iOS updates rolling out after release!

Fastlane – Fastlane is now available as pre-installed on the test machines.

Xcode – was updated to Xcode8.3. We’ll start upgrading devices to support the latest available iOS version 10.3.2 during next week.

We decided on not updating Appium version as the new stable version came very late and we didn’t know how stable it would be.

Calabash upgraded to latest version 0.20.5

Support for Gemfile-file in uploaded test zip files. This should make it easier to setup special Ruby test environments.

New registration and activation process. If you don’t yet have an account for BitBar Testing go and create a new trial account!

Video recording is now available and set on for all Android test runs, except manual test sessions. For now, videos of test runs are available on the device test run view next to log files. Note some devices do not support video recording and getting the videos into the result files can take up to a minute longer than the other files.

HipChat integration. Last time we brought support for posting test run results to Slack, this time the same is available for HipChat. The integration is described at HipChat notifications.

iOS device availability was improved significantly. We have improved the way how our iOS devices are visible and available in the public cloud. All existing users were notified about this change beforehand as it affected all existing iOS device groups. As a summary this update broke existing device groups with iOS devices and these groups need to be recreated.

Making management of the main users easier for BitBar Testing admins - especially useful for on-premise installations or private cloud installations with admin rights - main admin can now convert a project sub-user into a main user. This action will make the original main user into a sub user.

Lastly, we hope you’ll enjoy the updated colors in our UI. We think these bring a breeze of freshness.

All users wishing to get in contact with us, can do so directly from the cloud, using the get in touch window. This is now moved to the top bar next to system notifications. You’ll be able to send us screenshots and files through this feedback form too.

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To get a better overview of the cloud usage for on-premise customers we’ve added some reporting about the cloud to Admin - Dashboard. You’ll here be able to check which users and teams are most using the cloud, which devices are being used (you might want to add additional instances) etc.

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On-premise customers get improved tracking on project and user creations so admins know who are using which parts of the product!

Slack notifications! We too love our Slack and thought that you should be able to get your test notifications to the channels that you use in your daily work. We’ll be adding some additional chat integrations here in the coming releases.

A new widget for getting email notifications was also added while working on the Slack notifications. You just need to add your email here, and select what type of notifications you want to receive into your mailbox!

Support for running Gamebench analytics on the client side Appium runs. To get started with this you just need to have Gamebench configured and use thetestdroid_gamebench capability in your script. Check out more on the capability here.

And a plethora of other things under the hood that is not directly visible on the UI.

Free plan changes to a free limited time trial period.

API change for file uploading. We wrote about this in ablog post last week. In practice this affects all users using theJava client, Run in Cloud Jenkins plugin, Gradle plugin.

Access to BitBar Monitoring. As you may have read we are working on a new productBitBar Monitoring. This is a mobile application synthetic monitoring solution that can be accessed with BitBar Testing credentials.

Possibility to set key bindings to your manual testing session. When testing some application that needs the user clicking on particular buttons or regions in the app multiple times. Doing this by mouse can be cumbersome but assigning keybindings for these make testing really simple. To try this out, you’ll need to enable Beta features under ‘My account’. When a manual session is started at the bottom of the device widget there will be an option to create key bindings.

Notable changes relate to using manual testing. In short whole of the manual session was rewritten to make it faster, more usable and easier for the user to install all the apps that are needed during the testing session. For a whole description on how the manual testing works, please check theuser manual page.

The used notification system got also updated. This is the reason cloud now asks at first login to allow showing of notifications.

iOS AppCrawler enabled again. Due to the iOS side updates that were done since the beginning of the year, now the AppCrawler was done from scratch. Because of this the AppCrawler won’t work exactly the same as the old one. Also, for now, it won’t be able to fill in login or other forms.

UI modifications and improvements. Notably changes in the My Account page which now contains available and enabled integrations and the list of account users. Account users are users that are allowed to run test runs billed to the current user.

Interested in getting deeper hardware statistics about how apps behave on various devices in BitBar Testing? It’s now possible by providing existing Gamebench credentials to get device and app statistics gathered from each test run in BitBar Testing. This same Gamebench integration is also supported on On-premise and private cloud setups.

A ton of small fixed here and there, especially on our iOS side Appium execution.

XCTest for iOS10 devices available to all paid plans. iOS10 devices were introduced to public cloud about a month ago and now the support for running XCTest test on them is available to all users. For more information on how to build the app IPA and how to package the tests is available inour documentation.

Calabash project type available to all new users regardless of the registered plan. Free users are limited by number of available free devices. Existing free users get access to Calabash projects by upgrading to apaid plan.

iOS manual testing support is now part of default BitBar Testing. Manual testing with iOS devices was until now enabled per device for dedicated devices and for Private and Enterprise installations. Testing how the app looks and behaves on real Apple devices is now easier than ever.

Jenkins Run in Cloud plugin updated to version 1.0.17. This fixes issues with downloading results and starting Appium server test runs.

Calabash environment variables. For better control over Calabash test run executions environment variables are typically used. In BitBar Testing it is possible to give values to the two pre-existing environment variablesCALABASH_TAGS and CALABASH_PROFILE, in the advanced settings of a test run. These can be used to better orchestrate in which order tests get executed.

Project type names were renamed for better clarity. BitBar Testing solution is very test framework agnostic but we have a number of predefined common project types available. Below is how we have renamed the project types.

Android > Android Instrumentation

Android’s own unit testing framework meant to run on the device for functional testing.

Appium Android > Appium Android client side

To unify the naming convention with Appium client and server side projects. Earlier naming was not explicit about the client side approach.

Appium iOS > Appium iOS client side

Uniformity to project naming conventions between client and server side projects.

Chromedriver gets a version upgrade to latest version of 2.25.

For easier screenshot step recognition in device test run view, the screenshot names are attached below the screenshots.

Appium server sideimage recognition sample test gets a total rework. The sample project shows step by step how to do image recognition testing using Appium for testing eg. games.

We setup our Maven central proxy making any Maven installs more robust and a lot faster. This is great news for all and especially Java server side mobile test runs. For more information about Maven mirrors checkhere.

Sample demo project is removed in BitBar testing after user creates first new project.

Testdroid Cloud supports video recording of Android test runs. This is a premium feature that is available for Team and Business plans. To enable video recording of your test runs, please contact your named service representative or [email protected]. Support for iOS test run recording is coming shortly.

AppCrawler quick project creator includes credential fields. Instead of having to go through creating a new AppCrawler test run from the create test run menu, it’s now possible to include app credentials also in the quick AppCrawler creator.

Enterprise customers get yet more admin capabilities to manage their dedicated device cloud. Admins can now easily create teams inside of Testdroid Cloud which allows reporting per team based usage statistics. Getting an answer to which team uses device cloud most is then straight forward.

Find the user that needs to be added as sub user and on user information page click on the button to set main user

It’s then possible to select the main user

Enterprise users can define how many times test runs get retried or not. There’s now a new API call that can be used for changing the number of times that a test is retried. There are multiple cases when a test should not be re-run even if there’s a problem with the test or device. If you have an Enterprise or Private cloud setup please be in touch with your customer success contact person to get more information about this.

New project types for server side runs available to all users with SOLO plan or up. To create a server side Appium project, simply select Appium iOS or Android Server side project type from the project drop down list.

Appium client side testing picks similar available device by default

Enterprise cloud admin users are now able to manage project ownership through the admin panel. Go to Admin - Projects, select the project that you want to move to other user and click on the “Project owner” icon.

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You can then change the owner by selecting new user from the list.

Support for iOS 9.3.x devices using XCode 7.3.

Python version 3.5.1 is available for server side runs. To use it, just call your Python scripts with python3 your_test.py.

A touch or personalization is always fun. Testdroid Cloud now supports avatars through the Gravatar service.