About
Kea2 is an easy-to-use tool for fuzzing mobile apps. Its key novelty is able to fuse automated UI testing with scripts (usually written by human), thus empowering automated UI testing with human intelligence for effectively finding crashing bugs as well as non-crashing functional (logic) bugs.
Kea2 is currently built on top of Fastbot 3.0 (a modified/enhanced version of the original FastBot 2.0), an industrial-strength automated UI testing tool from ByteDance, and uiautomator2, an easy-to-use and stable Android automation library. Kea2 currently targets Android apps.
Kea2_demo.mp4
Novelty & Important features
-
Feature 1(Cha Zhao Wen Ding Xing Wen Ti ): coming with the full capability of Fastbot for stress testing and finding stability problems (i.e., crashing bugs);
-
Feature 2(Zi Ding Yi Ce Shi Chang Jing \Shi Jian Xu Lie \Hei Bai Ming Dan \Hei Bai Kong Jian 1): customizing testing scenarios when running Fastbot (e.g., testing specific app functionalities, executing specific event traces, entering specifc UI pages, reaching specific app states, blacklisting specific activities/UI widgets/UI regions) with the full capability and flexibility powered by python language and uiautomator2;
-
Feature 3(Zhi Chi Duan Yan Ji Zhi 2): supporting auto-assertions when running Fastbot, based on the idea of property-based testing inheritted from Kea, for finding logic bugs (i.e., non-crashing functional bugs).
For Feature 2 and 3, Kea2 allows you to focus on what app functionalities to be tested. You do not need to worry about how to reach these app functionalities. Just let Fastbot help. As a result, your scripts are usually short, robust and easy to maintain, and the corresponding app functionalities are much more stress-tested!
The ability of the three features in Kea2
| Feature 1 | Feature 2 | Feature 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding crashes | |||
| Finding crashes in deep states | |||
| Finding non-crashing functional (logic) bugs |
Kea2's Users
Kea2 (and its idea) has been used/integrated by
-
OPay Business --- a financial & payment app (20 millions of active users daily). OPay uses Kea2 for regression testing on POS machines and mobile devices.
-
WeChat's iExplorer --- WeChat's in-house testing platform (coming with an interactive UI-based tool to ease writing scripts)
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WeChat Payment's UAT --- WeChat Payment's in-house testing platform (fully automated property-based testing by synthesizing properties from the system specifications)
-
DevEco Testing --- Huawei's Official Testing Platform for HarmonyOS (Kea2 is built upon Hypium)
Please let us know and willing to hear your feedback/questions if you are also using Kea2.
Design & Roadmap
Kea2 currently works with 3 open-sourced projects:
- unittest as the testing framework to manage the scripts;
- uiautomator2 as the UI test driver;
- Fastbot as the backend automated UI testing tool.
Several key features of Kea2 are inspired by Hypothesis, the property-based testing framework for Python.
In the future, Kea2 will be extended to support:
- pytest, another popular python testing framework;
- Appium, Hypium (for HarmonyOS/Open Harmony);
- any other automated UI testing tools (not limited to Fastbot)
Installation
Running environment:
- support Windows, MacOS and Linux
- python 3.8+, Android 5.0~16.0 (Android SDK installed)
- Disable localhost proxy (some VPNs affect u2). Set it to bypass
localhostor turn off the VPN if needed. (Required for Features 2 and 3.)
Install Kea2 by pip:
Find Kea2's options by running
Upgrade Kea2 to its latest version if you already installed Kea2 before:
If you're using mirror sites like Tsinghua or USTC, you may fail to upgrade. Because these sites may not have the latest version yet. In this case, you can try to install Kea2 by specifying the latest version manually, or use
pypi.orgdirectly bypip install kea2-python -i https://pypi.org/simple.
Upgrade Kea2 to the specifc latest version (e.g., 1.0.0) if you already installed Kea2 before:
Initialize Kea2 under your preferred working directory:
This initialization step is always needed if it is your first time to run Kea2. If you have upgraded Kea2, you are also recommended to rerun this step to ensure any potential new configurations of Kea2 would take effect.
Quick Test
Kea2 connects to and runs on Android devices. We recommend you to do a quick test to ensure that Kea2 is compatible with your devices.
-
Connect to a real Android device or an Android emulator and make sure you can see the connected device by running
adb devices. -
Run
quicktest.pyto test a sample appomninotes(released asomninotes.apkin Kea2's repository). The scriptquicktest.pywill automatically install and test this sample app for a short time.
Run the quick test:
This quick test would automatically download
omninotes.apk. If the download fails, please copyomninotes.apkfrom Kea2's repository (top-level) to your working directory and execute the quick test command again.
If you can see the app omninotes is successfully running and tested, Kea2 works!
Otherwise, please help file a bug report with the error message to us. Thank you!
Feature 1 (Find crashes with the full capability of Fastbot and get kea2 test reports)
Test your app with the full capability of Fastbot for stress testing and finding stability problems (i.e., crashing bugs); Meanwhile, you can get test reports generated by Kea2 to understand app behaviors and discovered bugs during testing.
To understand the meanings of the options, you can see our user manual.
The usage is similar to the the original Fastbot's shell commands.
See more options by
Feature 2 (Run Enhanced Fastbot: Custom Testing Scenarios/Event Sequences/Widget Whitelists and Blacklists)
When running any automated UI testing tools like Fastbot to test your apps, you may find that some specifc UI pages or functionalities are difficult to reach or cover. The reason is that Fastbot lacks knowledge of your apps. Fortunately, this is the strength of script testing. In Feature 2, Kea2 can support writing small scripts to guide Fastbot to explore wherever we want. You can also use such small scripts to block specific widgets during UI testing.
In Kea2, a script is composed of two elements:
- Precondition: When to execute the script.
- Interaction scenario: The interaction logic (specified in the script's test method) to reach where we want.
Simple Example
Assuming Privacy is a hard-to-reach UI page during automated UI testing. Kea2 can easily guide Fastbot to reach this page.
# precondition: when we are at the page `Home`
@precondition(lambda self:
self.d(text="Home").exists
)
def test_goToPrivacy(self):
"""
Guide Fastbot to the page `Privacy` by opening `Drawer`,
clicking the option `Setting` and clicking `Privacy`.
"""
self.d(description="Drawer").click()
self.d(text="Settings").click()
self.d(text="Privacy").click()
- By the decorator
@precondition, we specify the precondition --- when we are at theHomepage. In this case, theHomepage is the entry page of thePrivacypage and theHomepage can be easily reached by Fastbot. Thus, the script will be activated when we are atHomepage by checking whether a unique widgetHomeexists. - In script's test method
test_goToPrivacy, we specify the interaction logic (i.e., openingDrawer, clicking the optionSettingand clickingPrivacy) to guide Fastbot to reach thePrivacypage. - By the decorator
@prob, we specify the probability (50% in this example) to do the guidance when we are at theHomepage. As a result, Kea2 still allows Fastbot to explore other pages.
You can find the full example in script quicktest.py, and run this script with Fastbot by the command kea2 run:
kea2 run -p it.feio.android.omninotes.alpha --running-minutes 10 propertytest discover -p quicktest.py
Feature 3 (Run Enhanced Fastbot: Add Assertions)
Kea2 supports auto-assertions when running Fastbot for finding logic bugs (i.e., non-crashing bugs). To achieve this, you can add assertions in the scripts. When an assertion fails during automated UI testing, we find a likely functional bug.
In Feature 3, a script is composed of three elements:
- Precondition: When to execute the script.
- Interaction scenario: The interaction logic (specified in the script's test method).
- Assertion: The expected app behaviour.
Example
In a social media app, message sending is a common feature. On the message sending page, the send button should always appears when the input box is not empty (i.e., has some message).
For the preceding always-holding property, we can write the following script to validate the functional correctness: when there is an input_box widget on the message sending page, we can type any non-empty string text into the input box and assert send_button should always exists.
lambda self: self.d(description="input_box").exists
)
def test_input_box(self):
# genenerate a random non-empty string (this is also property-based testing
# by feeding random text inputs!)
from hypothesis.strategies import text, ascii_letters
random_str = text(alphabet=ascii_letters).example()
# input this non-empty string into the input box
self.d(description="input_box").set_text(random_str)
# check whether the send button exists
assert self.d(description="send_button").exist
# we can even do more assertions, e.g.,
# the input string should successfully appear on the message sending page
assert self.d(text=random_str).exist
We use hypothesis to generate random texts.
You can run this example by using the similar command line in Feature 2.
Test Reports
Kea2 automatically generates a HTML test report after each testing session. You can find the report in output/ under your working directory.
Sample test reports
- Single test report - Courtesy of Opay.
- Merged test report (multiple runs) - Summary for multiple runs.
You can find more details on the test report in this documentation.
User Manual (Yong Hu Shou Ce )
Please see the user manual for more details on how to use Kea2.
Qing Cha Kan Yong Hu Shou Ce Yi Huo Qu Geng Duo Kea2De Xiang Xi Wen Dang .
News & Media
- Property-driven Testing Technology: Next-generation GUI Automated Testing - Video replay and slides @ MTSC 2025
- Let's GoSSIP 2025 Software Security Summer School: Kea2 (Preview #1)
Industry perspectives on Kea2 (click to expand, courtesy of Opay):
What does a "property" mean in Kea2? What is Kea2's value?
Kea2 is essentially a toolkit that combines Python, uiautomator2, and Fastbot. It is like a vehicle chassis with an engine and wheels already assembled.
The concept of "property" was introduced by Prof. Su's team. In practical testing work, a property corresponds to a minimal, atomic app function with little or no dependency on other flows, so it can run independently. Typical examples include login (enter username, enter password, submit) or liking a video with just a few steps.
The value of combining properties with Kea2 is that it addresses the "heavy scripting" issue in Appium-style tests. With Appium, testing one property often requires many lines of navigation code. With Kea2, you mainly define the property itself, and Fastbot plus its learning strategy handles how to reach the target state.
Another major value is technical enablement: Kea2 provides lighter UI scripting than Appium, while compensating for Fastbot's original limitations in property logic and assertions. It preserves Fastbot's strengths and fills key capability gaps.
In short, for strictly orchestrated functional test cases, Appium is still a fine choice. But if your goal is exploratory testing, fuzz/stress testing, or compatibility testing, Kea2 is strongly recommended.
