Vysor is a handy tool for testing.

Hi, Habr! In this article I want to talk about a handy tool for the work of a QA-engineer. This is Vysor, an extension available on the Google online store that allows you to take screenshots and record videos from mobile devices.


There is no problem with recording everything you need with the iPhone (QuickTime on Mac), but for Android, third-party software is needed. The Vysor extension for Android weighs a ridiculous 5.46 MB, in contrast to the conditional Android Studio, the installer of which weighs more than 400 MB (and this software is not fully used by testers).


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The service has a free and pro version ($ 1.99 per month or $ 39.99 for life), as well as corporate licenses.

Case use

I'll tell you how I use Vysor in my work on a project - when testing a mobile application. I use Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and version of the application from the Play Market.



Task: you need to check the test case of displaying the product card screen and attach a screenshot of the results of the check in the bug tracker

Of course, you can simply take a screenshot on your mobile device with built-in tools. But it is much faster and more convenient to configure Vysor once, than to send the saved screenshot to the mail each time, or to pull it out of the device’s memory (having connected it to the computer anyway). Especially if, as part of testing one build, you need to take a lot of screenshots or screen recordings. Plus, enthusiasts can not touch the mobile device at all, but do all their tests with the mouse.

We return to our case. I'm on the product page. We came across Bellingham wine. In one click on the camera icon, I make a screenshot.



But this is not the end of the page I need - instead of several screenshots, I make a video of page scrolling in one click. As a result, we get the following: a browser is opened, in which my file from the video is loaded from LAN.

Advantages and disadvantages

Almost all the minuses of Vysor I noticed are reduced to the limitations of the free version :)




By the way, Vysor can be perfectly applied outside of testing.

• If your device has a broken touchscreen, you can perform any actions using the mouse and keyboard
• If you need to reset the phone remotely
• For the very lazy - answer SMS, lying with a laptop, without having to reach for the phone

How to setup

Before using the application, you need to set up the ODB connection of the Android phone to your computer. Then we install Vysor on the computer and attach a smartphone to it via “Find Devices”.



On the phone, we allow the application to debug via USB. And the Vysor application is immediately automatically downloaded to the device. Then it remains only to open a window with the broadcast screen of your phone on your computer.

What's inside

1 - Vysor settings button, which we will talk about later
2 - button for recording video from a mobile device (not available in the free version)
3 - Screenshot button
4 - volume control buttons on a mobile device
5 - screen rotation and on / off buttons
Developers provide the ability to manually customize the location (and generally display) of various application buttons.

Screenshots are made in good quality (according to the resolution of the screen of the mobile device) and automatically open in the browser, having previously been saved on the computer.

It is impossible to change the video settings in the free version, and in the pro version there are resolutions for recording quality and settings for the image displayed in the application. By the way, the minute video from the phone screen in the maximum available quality weighs 9 MB.

Conclusion

Vysor is simple and easy to install and use. Also, no crashes / failures were noticed, and this is a big plus for the testing tool.