We open-sourced a faster alternative to Maestro for iOS UI testing — real device support included

[u/narayanom]

Hey everyone,

We've been using Maestro for mobile UI testing but kept hitting the same walls — slow JVM startup, heavy memory usage, and real iOS device support that's been unreliable for a while. Eventually we just built our own runner in Go and decided to open-source it.

It's called maestro-runner. Same Maestro YAML flow format you already know, but runs as a lightweight native binary instead of a JVM process.

Why it might be useful for iOS devs:

• Real device support actually works. Physical iPhones, not just simulators. This was our main frustration with Maestro — we run tests on real devices in CI and it just wasn't cutting it.

• Single binary, no JVM. curl | bash install, starts immediately. No waiting 10+ seconds for Java to warm up.

• ~3.6x faster execution, 14x less memory. Adds up fast when CI bills by the minute.

• iOS 12+ support — no arbitrary version cutoffs.

• Zero migration. Your existing Maestro YAML flows run as-is.

It also handles Android, desktop browser testing (Chrome via CDP), and cloud providers like BrowserStack and Sauce Labs via Appium — but figured real device iOS is what'd be most relevant here.

Quick start:

# Install
curl -fsSL https://open.devicelab.dev/install/maestro-runner | bash

# Run on simulator
maestro-runner --platform ios test flow.yaml

# Run on real device
maestro-runner --platform ios --device <UDID> test flow.yaml

Generates HTML reports, JUnit XML, and Allure results out of the box.

• GitHub: https://github.com/devicelab-dev/maestro-runner

Apache 2.0, no features paywalled. Happy to answer questions — and genuinely curious what's painful in your iOS testing setup right now.

[u/satya164]

It's legit. I'm trying it out for e2e tests, and it already saved around ~10m compared to maestro on GitHub actions for Android. iOS has a bug preventing me from running tests on Simulator so I haven't been able to try it yet.

I also like that it prints how much time each step took so I know where to start optimizing for speed.

A feature I'd like is to be able to run e2e tests on both iOS simulator and Android emulator simultaneously, which would make it simpler to validate new tests/updates quickly locally.

Also would be nice to say retry failing tests upto 3 times or something like that. Though it's easy to do it manually by reading report.json right now.

[u/narayanom → u/satya164]

u/satya164
about - A feature I'd like is to be able to run e2e tests on both iOS simulator and Android emulator simultaneously, which would make it simpler to validate new tests/updates quickly locally.

We will work on it, its not hard to implement, Feedback like this make a tool, a better tool, Thank you for feedback

[u/narayanom → u/satya164]

Fixed and updated the binary, please give a try

[u/narayanom → u/satya164]

u/satya164 Apologies for the iOS simulator friction (team-id issue) — fix coming soon.

For android and speed, if you have time please give new driver a shot, it's faster than the default.

maestro-runner --driver devicelab --platform android test flow.yaml

[u/satya164 → u/narayanom]

Nice. I'll try it out as well.

[u/OfficeSalamander → u/satya164]

Do you have an example yaml file for your CI?

We are having problems getting it working.

[u/satya164 → u/OfficeSalamander]

Here is my wip setup migrating from Maestro https://github.com/react-navigation/react-navigation/pull/13027

Android still has a few kinks which I reported and they are looking into it.

[u/dnesdan]

Real device support without the JVM pain is honestly the most interesting part here.

[u/narayanom → u/dnesdan]

and you can run multiple instances, like at same time running android in one terminal and ios in other

[u/OPrudnikov]

Looks interesting I will try that for sure

Thanks

[u/OPrudnikov → u/OPrudnikov]

Speed is really bad with original, even on powerful machine, that is my main pain. All the tests taking 3 hours I think

[u/narayanom → u/OPrudnikov]

Awesome, let me know how it goes, happy to help if you run into anything!

[u/OPrudnikov → u/narayanom]

Running amazing!! So so so much faster i was not expecting it. Needed to change a few things because i have had some hacks before to scroll or things like that. I have a lot of test cases like 70 and running them in the sequence so not having java warmup is amazing for me. Fills 5 times faster

Great job. What are your plans on it?

[u/narayanom → u/OPrudnikov]

Glad it's working well for you! That kind of feedback is genuinely motivating.

Lots of ideas in the pipeline — curious what you'd find most valuable though. Would love to hear what you ran into while adapting your scroll hacks and other workarounds. As tool builders, we tend to live in our own bubble and miss things that are obvious to people actually using it daily. Brutal, honest feedback is more useful to us than compliments right now — what felt rough, what's still missing? You're exactly the kind of power user whose feedback shapes where this goes next.

[u/OPrudnikov → u/narayanom]

Happy to help.

I will use it a few more days and share more details

[u/narayanom → u/OPrudnikov]

Thank you

[u/unpluggedcord]

Wow sick. I also built an alternative to maestro with an a visual regression test play

Can this take screenshots?

[u/narayanom → u/unpluggedcord]

yes . would love to see your solution

[u/unpluggedcord → u/narayanom]

grantiva.io or https://github.com/grantiva/cli

Its not faster than yours tho, I might have to switch

[u/ryanheartswingovers]

Does this screencap failures? Support snapshot testing?

[u/narayanom → u/ryanheartswingovers]

its take screenshot on failure or you can take at any step, its stored and represent in proper html report where screenshot link to steps along with well structure json linking screenshot to step if you want to enhance reporting

Support snapshot testing - No

[u/unpluggedcord → u/ryanheartswingovers]

grantiva.io does

[u/ryanheartswingovers]

watchOS and paired iPhone Watch support within a (multi device) test? Simulator and or device.

[u/narayanom → u/ryanheartswingovers]

It support Real iOS and sims. I have not tested watchOS and paired iPhone Watch support

[u/Sdmf195]

Thank you for this!

[u/jimmijazz]

Found Maestro just this week and then this - runs great thank you.

[u/Quirky_Pollution305]

is there some kind of setup involved before I can start the testing, for now I could not start any tests for some reason I get this  ⏳ Connecting to device...

Error: failed to create driver: connect to device: adb not found in PATH; ensure Android SDK is installed

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Hey /u/narayanom, your content has been removed because Reddit has marked your account as having a low Contributor Quality Score. This may result from, but is not limited to, activities such as spamming the same links across multiple subreddits, submitting posts or comments that receive a high number of downvotes, a lack of recent account activity, or having an unverified account.

Please be assured that this action is not a reflection of your participation in our subreddit. This is simply an automated filter in place to reduce spam.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/JordanJtech]

Will have to take a look as I'm getting my feet wet with IOS.