UI Testing Failure - Neither element nor any descendant has keyboard focus on secureTextField

Question

This is my case:

let passwordSecureTextField = app.secureTextFields[\"password\"]
passwordSecureTextField.tap()
passwordSecureTextField.typeText(\"wrong_pass         


        

Answer 1

Finally, I wrote a script which edits the Simulator's .plist file and sets the ConnectHardwareKeyboard property to false for the selected simulator. You heard it right, it changes the property for the specifically selected simulator inside "DevicePreferences" dictionary rather than editing the global property.

First, create a shell script named disable-hardware-keyboard.sh with the following contents. You can place it within "YourProject/xyzUITests/Scripts/".:

echo "Script: Set ConnectHardwareKeyboard to false for given Simulator UDID"

if [[ $1 != *-*-*-*-* ]]; then
    echo "Pass device udid as first argument."
    exit 1
else
    DEVICE_ID=$1
fi

DEVICE_PREFERENCES_VALUE='ConnectHardwareKeyboard'
killall Simulator # kill restart the simulator to make the plist changes picked up
defaults write com.apple.iphonesimulator DevicePreferences -dict-add $DEVICE_ID $DEVICE_PREFERENCES_VALUE
open -a Simulator # IMPORTANT

Now follow these steps to call it with passing the selected simulator's udid as an argument:

1. Edit your Xcode scheme (or UI tests specific scheme if you have one)
2. Go to: Test > Pre-actions
3. Add new script by tapping "+" symbol > "New Run Script Action".
4. Important: Inside "Provide build settings from" dropdown choose your main app target, not the UI tests target.
5. Now add the following script in the text area below.

Script inside Test>Pre-actions:

#!/bin/sh
# $PROJECT_DIR is path to your source project. This is provided when we select "Provide build settings from" to "AppTarget"
# $TARGET_DEVICE_IDENTIFIER is the UDID of the selected simulator
sh $PROJECT_DIR/xyzUITests/Scripts/disable-hardware-keyboard.sh $TARGET_DEVICE_IDENTIFIER

# In order to see output of above script, append following with it:
#  | tee ~/Desktop/ui-test-scheme-prescript.txt

Time to test it:

1. Launch simulator
2. Enable hardware keyboard for it
3. Run any UI test with keyboard interaction. Observe the simulator restarts and the hardware keyboard is disabled. And the test's keyboard interaction is working fine. :)