The most obvious debug helper tool is the new screen recording feature

Thank you iOS 11

Intro

There it is, the beginning of October, I got my new iPhone 8 Plus, so yeah, I am not waiting for the X, since they are kind of the same in terms of features and all(excluding the hardware design and the Face ID indeed 👊). Still, it is a big change for me, I moved from regular size to plus size — hard to fit the phone in one hand but hey, that was the idea. What I need is something like an iPad but not the iPad all because I am too lazy to open my lap top when I want to watch YouTube 📺. Tough life I have, I know!

That is, however, not the most important thing I noticed while exploring my new phone. And what did I find, oh boy?! Initially it was all the stuff the Apple guys advertised and most people care about — the phone is really freaking fast, takes awesome pictures, the True Tone display is a great addition, the wireless charging, etc. But I am not a regular person, I am a developer!! And if you are developer too, you know what I mean — you consider how these new features are going to help you in your workday. And one particular feature I really cared for.

Screen recording directly from the phone?! About time!

No cables, no quickTime player, no nothing needed, just the phone. Think of the implications of that? I have a couple of examples

A real-life example from work before iOS 11

We started working on this app some months ago, we still are. It is an IoT app — some things get connected, data is passed over low-energy bluetooth, data is displayed. Cool stuff, right? We, the dev company, are situated in Europe while the guys that want the app made, who also act as the app testers most of the time, are in the USA. Also cool, right?

But there it happened, app testers started testing and we received some feedback regarding user experience, app crashes and app performance — the usual stuff we would care about. However, we generally need a structured report which is why we have this long list with instructions we give to app testers. They do what they do, they follow the list, and in turn we end up with another long list of instructions we would need to follow if we want to replicate anything.

I did not enjoy that!

A real-life example from work after iOS 11

Re-read that stuff about the app we work on and the app testing, etc. Now think about the screen recording feature. Nifty, right? All needed now is to ask the testers to update their phones to iOS 11 and show them how to record stuff with these steps:

Step 1, go to Settings:

Step 2, go to Control Center:

Step 3, go to Customize Controls:

Step 4, hit the green plus next to Screen Recording:

Step 5, swipe up from screen bottom, and press the button for Screen Recording:

3, 2, 1 …