The Beginner’s Guide to Sauce Labs

I. Common problems

In today’s mobile era, the common problems faced by mobile software developers are:

• • Not enough equipment.
  • No complete testing processes.
  • Unable to access the device when needed.
  • Slow and inefficient in debugging.
  • Not effective when combined with other teams.
  • Takes a long time to install and update the operating system.
  • Waiting for the remote device to be restored.
  • Lost or damaged equipment must be replaced.

II. Introduce Sauce Labs

Sauce Labs is a full-scale testing platform that supports every stage of your software development and operations lifecycle to ensure complete digital confidence every time a user hits your website or app, regardless of the device, browser, or operating system from which it is being accessed.

Key features of Sauce Labs:

• • Real device Cloud.
  • Support the most extensive range of iOS and Android device.
  • Integration with popular open-source frameworks and tools all in one place.

III. Benefits of Sauce Labs

• Make mobile app testing faster and easier.
• Get instant access to the latest devices.
• Run automated testing to workflow and run more tests faster.
• Quickly determine the root cause of test failures and errors.
• Share test results and resolve issues with the team.
• Spend less time debugging and more time creating an amazing mobile experience.

III. Features of Sauce Labs

1. Supported devices, browsers and platforms

• • Sauce Labs support thousands of browser/operating system combinations, including 1700+ emulators and simulators, and 6000+ iOS and Android real devices across our global data centers.
    • Chrome
    • Edge
    • Firefox
    • Safari
    • iOS
    • Android
  • Supported platforms:
    • Sauce Labs runs on 2 platforms: virtual and real devices:

• •  Virtual
    • PC: Window 7 → Window 11
    • Mac: OS X Yosemite (10.10) → Ventura (13)
    • iOS Simulator: iOS 10.3 → iOS 16.2
    • Android: Android 5.1 → Android 13
  • Real device
    • iOS
    • Android

2. Supported CI/CD tools

Sauce Labs can integrate with CI/CD tools like:

• • • • GitLab
      • Azure
      • Jenkins
      • Bamboo
      • TeamCity

3. Compare with BrowserStack

a. What is BrowserStack?

• • • • BrowserStack is primarily a web and mobile testing platform. This service is used to test the applications that are developed. These applications can be websites or even mobile applications.

b. Sauce Labs and BrowserStack comparison:

• • • • The main difference between BrowserStack and Sauce Labs is the secure testing protocols of BrowserStack are less effective when compared to Sauce Labs.
      • BrowserStack uses real-world testing machines while Sauce Labs provides a cloud-based automated testing platform
      • BrowserStack has limited browsers to test on, while Sauce Labs uses 500+ browsers to test any developed application.
      • BrowserStack has a shortcoming in the testing aspect as it does not perform any requirement-based testing procedures while Sauce Labs is a master.
      • The price for subscribing BrowserStack services is less when compared to Sauce Labs.

IV. Configuration, Test Execution and Test Report

1. Configuration Guide:

• • When you successfully create an account with Sauce Labs, you will be redirected to the Getting Started Guide page.

• • You can select the framework of your choice. For instance, I chose Cypress:

2. Test Execution:

• • Execute the script using the Build ID provided by Sauce Labs

saucectl run --region eu-central-1 --build <buildId>

3. Test Report:

• • You can view the report in the command prompt/terminal after running the test

• • Or you can view the report in Sauce Labs