Run Xamarin.UITest for iOS locally on Windows via connected Mac's iOS simulator

[mzhukovs]

Describe the solution you'd like Currently, for Visual Studio Windows users, we are not able to run Xamarin.UITest on an iOS Simulator via the connected Mac. It would be great to be able to do so, since we can already run the app on iOS Simulator from VS Windows, and even remote the simulator back to VS on Windows.

Describe alternatives you've considered In this case, the only available alternative is to use VS for Mac, which is a non-trivial hassle if you're developing on VS Windows.

[Welchen]

+1

[Aresak]

+1

[LukasBajus]

Still no work on this? Is there at least some workaround or something to run my code on my Windows workstation on iPhone emulator?

[andrewnemecek]

This would be helpful.

[Mahesh5R]

It will be really great....👍.....+1

[smit1712]

This would make my life so much easier

[LukasBajus]

OK I'll ask in another way. Is it somehow possible to see how my iPhone tests works (debug them) on Windows machine?

[curia-damiano]

OK I'll ask in another way. Is it somehow possible to see how my iPhone tests works (debug them) on Windows machine?

Sadly not that I am aware... I am awaiting for this feature since two years and I won't give up.

Btw there are other features to bring from VS4Mac to VS4Win:

• reference Test Project in solution (currently not possible, you need to add reference to .apk/.ipa)
• reintroduce Unit Test template projects (available in the past, removed from VS4Win)

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[smardine]

Do not close it please it's a very nice feature and lot of people want it 😁

[DerekFoulk]

Yes, please don't close this. This has been a big hole in our workflow.

[LukasBajus]

how can you close it just like that? can somebody have a look on it? it has been ignored for a long time. Of course there is no activity on it, because I was already tired of writing here and talking to myself...

[Brosten]

Unfortunately it seems like all work with AppCenter is halted long time ago. I guess MS have some plan they havn't yet made public. Moving things to GitHub? Closing AppCenter or whatever, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for things to progress in AppCenter.

[MichaelSafro]

Joining the plea not to close the issue, but provide a solution instead!

[curia-damiano]

+1 please don't close it

[ricardomomm]

+1

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[LukasBajus]

again. please don't close it. This still doesn't work, and no workaround or solution has been provided.

[marcos-marimon]

I do support this feature, too.

[martinthesmith]

+1 It shouldn't be closed.

[CrosswiredStudios]

Its time to add this, MAUI wont wow people enough if you cant fully test.

[andrea-gavioli]

+1 UI tests are extremely important and should be super nice to have this feature

[Don-Antonio]

Even though we're in 2023, this feature remains unsupported. Disappointed

[LukasBajus]

I am disappointed as well. Seems like they just stop carrying about it. I still have automated suite only for android and waiting for ability to do also iOS suite for over a two years

[jmichas]

Have any of you tried to use Appium to accomplish this?

I switched to developing on Mac with VS Mac and switched over all my Xam UI Tests to Appium using SpecFlow, it works much better than Xam UI used to, I always had problems running my tests reliably. Now my Appium code spins up docker instances and runs tests in simulator/emulator or physical attached devices and spins my test docker stuff down when done.

Might be worth checking out if you can trigger UI tests from windows using Appium.

[LukasBajus]

@jmichas Thanks for the tip. One follow-up question, is your application written in xamarin.forms ? Cause at the beginning I was trying to use Appium with our app, but it was not working very well as our app is in xamarin.forms . Maybe something changed in those three years and it actually works now.

[jmichas]

@LukasBajus Yeah, ours is a xam forms app too. There was a bit of a learning curve and I wrote some extension methods to minimize the amount of xam UI test code I needed to refactor, but once I got it working I feel it is more powerful than xam ui and less problematic. One problem I always ad with xam ui was with the calabash agent not running or connecting. Appium is much more stable for me. But I also have not tackled running the UI tests as part of CI/CD build, I run my tests manually offline as a last QA before merging major code updates.

[DmitriyKirakosyan]

As we do not have plans to add support for this feature in the next year, I'm closing the issue.

[LukasBajus]

great job!