What are you favourite software testing tools?

Arenā€™t all software testers always looking for useful and new tools? And donā€™t we all like to have a nosey about at what tools other testers are using?

Here is your chance to share and support the community!

Thereā€™s a great Twitter thread here on the topic and a LinkedIn one too, but nothing like having a list here that will last for months and years to come.

I would ask you stick to 2 rules:

  • donā€™t use ā€˜my brainā€™ as your tool response
  • sales pitches will be exterminated, so donā€™t even try :grimacing:
10 Likes

CyPress for E2E automation, Lightshot for static screenshots, LICEcap for short videos, and Bug Magnet browser extension for edge case values. These are the ones that I use regularly, there are some more that I use as needed.

For task tracking we used Trello, but this year we switched to Notion.

And of course, Spotify for extra motivation. :metal: :smiley:

5 Likes

I tend to use Excel for tracking things and data creation in the short term, Notepad++ for quick notes, actual notepads for doodling, Skype for conversations and screen-sharing with remote colleagues, Azure Devops for task and bug tracking, and whatever else is needed on a case-by-case basis.

2 Likes

I use TestFLO for manual test plan management which is integrated with Jira and makes it super easy to create follow up cases when necessary. I also use a bunch of Google Sheets to organize myself, and I use Sahi Pro for test automation, though it is advertised as a codeless option, but I had to learn a lot of code to be able to use it. Either way, it works for our purposes!

I also recently started playing with FullStory - because my parent company was using it and recommended it - which records user sessions that I can play back, but I havenā€™t found a great way to incorporate it into my flow yet. So far itā€™s only integrated with our staging site so I can peek at testers behavior but I mostly forget itā€™s there.

2 Likes

FakeData save me a lot of time, used to fill in form with a short cut

Fake Data - A form filler you won't hate ā€“ Get this Extension for šŸ¦Š Firefox (en-GB)

Also the Selenuim IDE

4 Likes

Testrail has been massively beneficial in tracking our test runs and compiling them into reports for audits.

Postman is excellent to test our APIs

Ghost Inspector provides great smoke tests for releases and is incredibly simple and effective.

Finally, the Form Filler chrome extention has saved many an hour filling in registration forms!

2 Likes

Outlook and Teams for communication
JIRA for bug tracking
QAF for test script writing and bug report creation (this is our own creation, works for Manual & Automated Tests, and has a neat dashboard and communicates with JIRA quite well)
Test & Feedback Firefox & Chrome extension for most exploratory work or for reproducing bug steps to communicate to Developers
Grammarly ('cause i forgot to uninstall it) Chrome extension and it doesnā€™t hurt to be clear when communicating - although itā€™s not always correct.
Clear Cache Chrome extension
Counterstring Chrome extension for generating field-measurement strings
Code Writer for analysing code and xml/html etc
Textpad 8 for basic text manipulation (it has a lovely block feature so I can highlight columns)
Filezilla for SFTP interactions
Powerpoint for storing screenshots with basic notes that I can then edit and pass to the Trainers/Documentors
IBM i Access Client Solutions for their AS400 emulator and for running SQL scripts to retrieve data directly from files

3 Likes

Clipx for clipboard history manager
Notepad ++
Lightshot for screenshots
Ocam for video recorder

1 Like

Iā€™ve been loving XMind for Test Planning and Tracking.

Thanks for the tip - loving FakeData!

1 Like

Kinda missing tools for documentation. I use dokuwiki and confluence to document and share knowledge about the product (and customer demands). But also for testing techniques used and lessons learned.

Hi,

VSCode - for note taking and with some extensions, like, Rest Client to help API testing.

Postman - but after beeing using VS Code Rest Client extension Iā€™m stoping using it. Itā€™s more easy to share colection with the team using VS Code Rest Client

MobXterm - managing/organize my shells and VMs

MS SQL Server Management Studio

Robot 3T

Kafka Tools - for validation of produced and consumed Kafka messages

SourceTree - for a simple view of repo

InteliJ - IDE that iā€™m using to implement Karate API tests

andā€¦ I think that is all :slight_smile:

Any suggestion for a alternative sw? :slight_smile:

Thank!

2 Likes

Just ran a quick exploratory session with TestBuddy, love how simple it is to use. The default pdf ā€œreportā€ is quite slick too

Software testing tools is a very broad concept that in practice is divided into some more subtle specifications. Let me clarify this in the list below thatā€™s oriented towards PHP, Java and JavaScript:

Quick running tests

  • Unit tests (PHPUnit, JUnit, QUnit, ā€¦)
  • Mutation tests (Infection, PiTest, Stryker, ā€¦)
  • Behaviour tests (Behat, Cucumber, Jasmine, ā€¦)
  • Security tests (Rips, SonarCube, Wapiti, ā€¦)

Automated Dynamic testing

  • Selenium
  • Katalon Studio
  • Netflix Simian Army
  • SSLLabs
  • OH Dear App (Paid)

Manual Testing

  • TestBuddy
  • OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP)
  • Burp Proxy

Other tools

  • Snort for intrusion detection testing
  • SQLSlap for DB performance testing
  • JMeter, AB and Joe Siege for (web) app performance testing
  • Sentry for automated error reporting (not actual testing, but reporting)

Since Iā€™m primarily working with PHP backend systems, I also have list of tools I specifically use to validate and improve applications written in PHP:

  • Exacat: analyzing, reporting and assessing PHP code source efficiently and systematically
  • GrumPHP: register some git hooks in your package repository
  • Phan: static analyzer for PHP
  • PHP_CodeSniffer: coding standards checker
  • PHP MD: PHP mess detection
  • PHP CPD: PHP copy/paste detection
  • PHP DCD: PHP dead code detection
  • PHP LOC: Analyses your code base and gives you a report of Lines of Code
  • Vimeo Psalm: static analysis tool for finding errors in PHP applications
  • Roave Security Advisories: prevents installation of packages with known vulnerabilities
  • Faker: generates fake data

Test reporting and tracking tools

  • Phabricator: open source Jira replacement on steroids
  • MantisBT: open source bug tracker
  • SonarCube: SaaS for running and displaying test results
  • Jenkins-CI: All in one CI/CD with limited reporting capabilities

I believe in the shift left approach where software testing should be really close to where itā€™s being created, if possible before in TDD. But often we end up with automated tests to catch the low hanging fruit early and more in-depth issues later in a CI/CD build pipeline. I also believe in a unified team where development, testing and security share the same space as operations and network so knowledge is shared and problems are solved as a group.

As a consultant I can bring in these ideas to improve the applications and create a blameless, cohesive atmosphere within the teams. The goal is to speed up lead time, reduce errors and create a better user experience and I believe that these tools I mentioned here are certainly helping me achieving this goal.

12 Likes

Jira - I donā€™t see any project without this.
RobotFramework - I really liked to do automation with this tool.
Katalon - Is less powerful than Robot but to short and fast projects is a good option.
PL/SQL. I used it for a while and is very useful.
Notepad ++ - Is always useful.

That I remember is that :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Hiptest for capturing BDD scenarios. Exporting to a C# framework which drives our IoT system at various levels (ZigBee, mobile app, cloud and serial communications). CI done with Team City.

1 Like

Cypress / Nightwatch for automated GUI tests
BackstopJS for visual regression
IntelliJ as my IDE for the two mentioned above
Skitch for taking screenshots - good for easily adding text, arrows, frames etc
Jira for story, tech task and defect management
Postman / Insomnia for API testing
DbVisualizer for querying our databases
k6.io for performance testing
Kibana for viewing logs

2 Likes

For Android testing

Vysor (https://www.vysor.io/)
(control multiple devices from your desktop - awesome!)

ADB (And more importantly ADB+)

Scrcpy (Alternative to vysor with some pros cons)

General

Charles Web Proxy Beta (Just awesomeness!!)

Text editor for Mac (Sublime text)

JWT (https://jwt.io/)
Manipulate JSON tokens - awesome!

Just a few of my favourite tools in current role

Sorry only allowed two links as iā€™m a new user so you will need to google the ones I didnā€™t add links for

I use JIRA for bug tracking, and SnagIt for screenshots and video. I also draw mind maps (mostly freehand but sometimes using Xmind) for exploratory testing tracking and coming up with new test ideas, and I find Excel useful for noting down more detailed test scenarios.

1 Like

Some tools I have used are-

Functional Testing Tools

  • Appium/Selenium
  • Sikuli
  • Adobe Edge Inspect
  • Test Studio
  • SeeTest
  • Testim
  • Cucumber
  • Protractor

Performance Testing Tools

  • Instruments part of Xcode
  • adb tool part of Android
  • NeoLoad
  • WebLOAD
  • LoadComplete
  • Apache Jmeter
  • BlazeMeter

Security Testing Tools

  • Mitmproxy
  • Clutch
  • iNalyzer
  • cycript
  • Introspy
  • Hopper

Accessibility Testing Tools

  • WAVE

  • Tenon

  • axe

  • Pa11y

  • JuicyStudio

  • Readability Test Tool

  • Test/Defect Management

  • Jira

  • TestRail

Traffic Monitoring

  • Fiddler
  • Charles proxy