Just launched: Maestro testing on real devices (with a CLI)

Over the past months, we’ve been quietly working on something our users have been asking for a long time:
running Maestro tests on real physical devices, with a proper CLI.

Today we’re rolling this out on TestingBot.

The problem we kept hearing

A lot of mobile teams love Maestro because it’s simple, fast and YAML-based. But in practice, most teams ended up stuck with one of two options:

• Running tests locally on emulators/simulators (fast, but not very realistic)

• Running tests on cloud providers that didn’t really support Maestro natively or required awkward workarounds

That meant flaky tests, weird device differences slipping through and CI pipelines that never quite felt reliable.

What we built

We decided to treat Maestro as a first-class citizen on TestingBot:

• ✅ Run Maestro flows on real Android and iOS devices

• ✅ Native TestingBot CLI for Maestro

  • Upload your app

  • Upload your Maestro flow

  • Trigger runs

  • Stream logs

• ✅ Run tests in parallel across multiple devices

• ✅ Full test artifacts:

  • Video recordings

  • Screenshots

  • Logs

  • Detailed run results

In practice, this means teams can now:

• Write simple Maestro flows locally

• Push them to TestingBot

• Run them on actual physical devices in the cloud

• And integrate everything cleanly into CI

What’s next?

We’re already working on:

• Better debugging tools for failed Maestro runs

• Deeper CI integrations

• More device types (newer iPhones, Android models, etc.)

• Better UX around test results

If you’re using Maestro today, or thinking about it, we’d love your feedback.

You can read more about the launch here:
https://testingbot.com/blog/maestro-physical-device-testing

And if you have questions about:

• Maestro

• Mobile testing

• Real devices vs emulators

• CLI tooling

• Or how we’re building this at TestingBot

Happy to chat in the comments. Keep building!