UI test fails when it types text into a text view when run by an Xcode bot

Question

I have the following XCTest UI test that types text into a text view.

let textView = app.textViews.elementBoundByIndex(0)
textView.tap()
textView.typeText("Hello world")

When run as an Xcode bot it shows the following error for the typeText call.

Assertion: UI Testing Failure - failed: Timed out waiting for key event to complete

Interestingly, when I run it manually from the Xcode on the same computer the test passes. This test also passed in Xcode bot before upgrade to Xcode 7.1 / iOS 9.1. What can be the source of the problem?

Here is an isolated demo with the UI test: https://github.com/exchangegroup/UITestTextViewDemo

iOS 9.1 Simulator, OS X 10.11.1 (15B42), Xcode 7.1 (7B91b), OS X Server 5.0.15 (15S4033)

Reported to Apple.

Answer 1

I believe the underlying issue is that "Connect Hardware Keyboard" is turned on by default. Even if you turn it off for the main user, the _xcsbuildd user still uses the default. I was able to solve the problem by adding a pre test action to the scheme with the following script:

if [ `defaults read com.apple.iphonesimulator ConnectHardwareKeyboard` -eq 1 ]
 then
  defaults write com.apple.iphonesimulator ConnectHardwareKeyboard -bool false
  killall "Simulator"
fi

Answer 2

I found a solution for my case and I hope it helps you as well.

In my setUp() and tearDown() (seems redundant I know) I put XCUIApplication().terminate(). This is ensuring that the app is terminated before running the next test and it seems to be doing the job.

override func setUp() {
    XCUIApplication().terminate()
    super.setUp()
    continueAfterFailure = false
    XCUIApplication().launch()
}
override func tearDown() {
    super.tearDown()
    XCUIApplication().terminate()
}

I filed a bug with Apple but for the time being this is getting me around the error that you were seeing. Hope that helps!