Possible to bring the app from background to foreground?

Question

When running an XCT UI test it is possible to put the application under test in the background with:

XCUIDevice().pressButton(XCUIDeviceButton.Home)

It it possible in some way to bring the app back to foreground (active state) without relaunching the application?

Answer 1

Update for Xcode 9: Starting in Xcode 9, you can now simply call activate() on any XCUIApplication.

let myApp = XCUIApplication()
myApp.activate() // bring to foreground

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xctest/xcuiapplication/2873317-activate

---

Yes, it is. But, you'll need XCUIElement's private headers (which are available via header dump from Facebook here). In order to foreground the app, you need to call resolve which I believe resolves the element's query (which for applications means foregrounding the app).

For Swift, you'll have to import the XCUIElement.h into your bridging header. For Objective-C you'll just need to import XCUIElement.h.

With the app backgrounded:

Swift:

XCUIApplication().resolve()

Objective-C

[[XCUIApplication new] resolve];

If this is the only functionality you need, you could just write a quick ObjC category.

@interface XCUIElement (Tests)
- (void) resolve;
@end

If you need to launch / resolve another app. Facebook has an example of that here by going through the Springboard.