Is anyone out there running automation on MacOS apps (not iOS, but MacOS desktop apps)?
How are you executing the tests in a pipeline? Are you using a cloud service like Bitrise?
What framework are you using, and would you recommend it?
Bonus points if it also supports Windows as cross platform!
Thanks in advance, I’m new to the topic of MacOS Desktop App automation, so I’m still discovering tools and platforms.
I would have loved to be an expert on desktop automation, but I would like to delve into it. For the moment, my main interest lies in automation tools and frameworks for Windows. I am, of course, hoping that the more experienced automation practitioners will offer their support!
From a tooling interface perspective, Appium may be a good choice.
You don’t get a single tool that handles multi-OS with Appium toolset, but you do get tooling support and client side code interface that can work across OS with minimal changes.
Appium is typically targeted for mobile OS automation, but there are tooling support to interface Appium for other platforms. For macOS, there is GitHub - appium/appium-mac2-driver: Next-gen Appium macOS driver, backed by Apple XCTest, which previously was GitHub - appium/appium-for-mac: [deprecated] Application for automating a mac app with JSON wire protocol.
For Windows, there was GitHub - microsoft/WinAppDriver: Windows Application Driver but given Microsoft’s supposed abandonment of it, it looks like Appium team is suggesting GitHub - AutomateThePlanet/appium-novawindows-driver per GitHub - appium/appium-windows-driver: Appium's interface to WindowsAppDriver provided by Microsoft. One could also look into other WinAppDriver alternatives, there are quite a few, but others don’t have the Appium team formal integration support. But one promising alternative is GitHub - FlaUI/FlaUI.WebDriver. See Update on WinAppDriver · Issue #1550 · microsoft/WinAppDriver · GitHub for more discussions.
Aside from Appium, if considering something cross platform, you may want to consider image recognition based automation tools like