qa tools - Video capture on ios and android devices

When performing blackbox testing on mobile devices, it can be difficult describing the issues you come across to developers. This is where screenshots and video recordings can help convey that message more clearly. Sometimes a bug happens so quickly a screenshot can be difficult to time in order to capture the error. There are other services and apps out there that help you accomplish this, but below are instructions on how you can do this with existing tools you may already have - so let's review how we can do video recordings on iOS and Android (via Mac)! 

iOS

1. Be sure you are running Yosemite or later (10.10) and update Quicktime Player
2. Plug in your trusted iOS device to your Mac
3. Open up Quicktime Player and start a new movie recording (COMMAND + OPTION + N)
4. Click on the drop down menu next to the recording button and select your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)
5. Click on the Record button when you are ready
6. Click on the Stop when you are complete - don't forget to save the file.

Anddddd done! You have now recorded the actions made on your iOS device! A quick note - this will work for devices on iOS 8 or higher.

Android

1. Be sure to set your .bash_profile with the paths to your android sdk tools
   1. Leave a comment if you aren't sure how to do this!
2. Plug in your trusted Android device to your Mac and be sure the device has USB Debugging enabled
   1. Usually found in Settings > General > Developer Options
3. Open your terminal
4. Type: adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/test.mp4
5. Press CTRL + C to stop recording
   1. Your video is now saved in /sdcard/test.mp4 on the device
   2. If you are getting an error this means you may not have set up your .bash_profile correctly
6. Type: adb pull /sdcard/test.mp4 ~/Desktop
   1. This will pull the video from the sdcard to your Desktop.
7. [Optional]
   1. Type: adb shell rm -r /sdcard/test.mp4
      1. ​This will remove the file from your device so you won't have too many videos hogging your memory
   2. Type: adb shell --bit-rate 6000000 /sdcard/test.mp4
      1. ​This will set your video quality to record at 6 Mpbs.
      2. Default quality is 4 Mbps

Boom! You have now recorded your actions from the physical device through the Terminal. 

This will hopefully save you a significant amount of time on how you used to make recordings and help you convey your bugs better to developers! Let me know what you think!