Testing is incredibly important in ensuring our app arrives to our users in as good a state as possible.

Xcode has had great unit testing support for a few releases now, but testing our UI has always been a challenge.

Instruments added support for it a while back, but it’s never felt like a first class citizen... Until now!

Xcode 7 brings us an awesome, fully baked set of UI testing tools. We can even make Xcode write much of your test code for us by simply interacting with our app.

Here's an example test created using the default Master-Detail template in Xcode. It presses the add button 3 times, then verifies that 3 cells now exist in the table view:

func testExample() {
    let app = XCUIApplication()

    let masterNavigationBar = app.navigationBars["Master"]
    let addButton = masterNavigationBar.buttons["Add"]

    addButton.tap()
    addButton.tap()
    addButton.tap()

    XCTAssert(app.tables.childrenMatchingType(.Cell).count == 3)
}

Recording UI Tests couldn't be easier. We just write an new empty test function, put our cursor in the middle of it, and press record.

UI Testing uses Accessibility under the hood to identify and retrieve UI elements at runtime. Just one more reason to make our apps as accessible as possible!