Testing iOS 12 Beta
Article Summary
Kateryna Sprynsian from Bumble Tech shares a hard truth: when iOS 12 launched, 60% of their users updated within 8 weeks. Were they ready? Here's how they avoided disaster.
The Bumble/Badoo QA team developed a systematic approach to testing iOS beta releases before millions of users upgraded. This article breaks down their manual testing process for iOS 12 Beta, including why they started at beta 6 (not beta 1) and what critical bugs they caught before launch.
Key Takeaways
- Started testing at beta 6, not beta 1—early betas too unstable
- Tested with both old Xcode 9 and new Xcode 10 builds
- Found crashes on launch, freezes, duplicate permissions, broken layouts
- CPU, memory, and battery usage showed no significant impact vs iOS 11
- Included iOS 12 checks in every feature, integration, and release test
By testing iOS 12 Beta across multiple Xcode versions and device configurations, Bumble caught critical crashes and UI bugs before 60% of their users upgraded in just 8 weeks.
About This Article
Kateryna Sprynsian's team found that apps compiled with different Xcode versions had different bugs on iOS 12 Beta. They needed to test with both old and new compiler versions to catch crashes that only appeared in certain builds.
Bumble compiled their app with Xcode 9 and Xcode 10 beta, then tested both versions across iOS 12 betas 6 through 12 and the GM release. They also ran Xcode 10 builds on iOS 11 to separate compiler issues from other problems.
This approach caught a critical Objective-C enum crash that happened when users opened profiles. The team fixed it before iOS 12 officially launched to millions of users.