Android Testify (or Testify for short) is an open-source tool for visual regression testing that helps Android developers ensure UI quality to build great user experiences. By partnering with Bitrise and using its CI/CD platform, it has been able to streamline its testing workflows, improve its stability, and accelerate its build and regression testing processes. As a result, Bitrise is helping boost developer efficiency, so the Testify team can focus on what they do best: creating exceptional mobile apps.
Android Testify was originally developed internally at leading e-commerce company Shopify as a visual regression test library. Due to its success, Shopify decided to open it up to the community as an open-source solution. When Shopify divested its interest in Testify, Daniel Jette and a group of core contributors took over the ongoing management of the venture.
“Traditional testing tools are focused primarily on business logic when the quality of the user interface is just as important. Communicating and tracking changes at the visual layer of development is an extremely underserved market. At Android Testify, we continue to focus on addressing that gap.”
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
The Testify team wanted to find a suitable CI/CD solution that would integrate with its open-source visual testing solution to improve the stability, efficiency, and reliability of its processes and results. "Bitrise felt like a perfect fit for what we were trying to achieve with Testify in terms of improving visual testing and accelerating the CI/CD process for Android mobile developers,” Daniel explained. Before using Bitrise, the team struggled to achieve consistent results with GitHub Actions. For example, its free tier did not offer a hardware-accelerated environment to allow the Android Emulator to run at native performance levels.
"With GitHub Actions, we were running a software-emulated environment, which introduces several potential issues. For example, shared resources and latency can impact performance, tests often stall, and tasks fail unpredictably. As a result, you are always trying to figure out if the issue is with your code or the environment, which wastes valuable time. Bitrise provides a setup much closer to a developer's local environment. With its Linux configuration and command-line tools, you can easily replicate and test scripts locally, ensuring consistent and reliable performance.”
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
"Migrating to Bitrise was a great decision. From the simplicity of its stacks, the platform's reliability and performance, and the quality of the emulator experience, our experience could not be better."
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
As a cost-conscious open-source project, every penny counts. The Testify team uses Bitrise's free tier, but has been impressed with the wealth of features it can use to drive new efficiencies and optimize its testing workflows.
"One of our favourite features is the custom Bitrise step. It allows the users of our library to run their own tests on Bitrise. We provide a step action for them to use Testify by enabling them to drop it into an existing workflow. Setting this all up was pretty simple, and our users seem to love it."
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
Testify has also been impressed with Bitrise Pipeline Builds, which Daniel describes as "a complete game-changer” for the team.
“Running builds in parallel using Bitrise pipelines has helped us achieve faster and more reliable results. Now we can get feedback in under 10 minutes instead of having to run all the tests sequentially, which previously took around an hour."
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
As Daniel and the team manage Android Testify in their free time, any efficiency boost is more than welcome. “With Bitrise, we get quick feedback while we're in the zone, which keeps the team engaged and productive—and crucially, gives us more time to do other things we enjoy,” Daniel explains. In addition to all the features available in its free tier plan, the Testify team has developed a special partnership with the Bitrise team.
"We feel a genuine sense of partnership with Bitrise. It's clear the team is passionate about the work they do and helping customers get the most from the platform. They are great to work with, and I can't recommend them highly enough."
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
“We want to provide a service that's easy for developers to use. With Bitrise's preconfigured workflows, users can apply them to their apps and see instant status and results in real-time—which is fantastic. Without a robust CI/CD platform, you'd only have half a solution. That's why I now see Bitrise as a core part of our offering, making the whole process more efficient and reliable.”
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
"With Bitrise, you get a personalized experience alongside enterprise-level functionality, which is invaluable for an open-source project like ours. It offers powerful build features and integrations right out of the box, allowing small companies to fill critical gaps without needing a full DevOps team. What’s not to love about that?”
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
“Ultimately, we want to provide developers with the tools they need to monitor and manage UI changes effectively and, in turn, make their lives easier. We see our partnership with Bitrise as instrumental in making that possible.”
Daniel Jette, Leader of Android Testify
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