Your job doesn't end with ensuring your site runs great across Chrome and Android. Even though Device Mode can simulate a range of other devices like iPhones, we encourage you to check out other browsers solutions for emulation.
Summary
- When you don't have a particular device, or want to do a spot check on something, the best option is to emulate the device right inside your browser.
- Device emulators and simulators let you mimic your development site on a range of devices from your workstation.
- Cloud-based emulators let you automate unit tests for your site across different platforms.
Browser emulators
Browser emulators are great for testing a site's responsiveness, but they don't emulate differences in API, CSS support, and certain behaviors that you'd see on a mobile browser. Test your site on browsers running on real devices to be certain everything behaves as expected.
Firefox' Responsive Design View
Firefox has a responsive design view that encourages you to stop thinking in terms of specific devices and instead explore how your design changes at common screen sizes or your own size by dragging the edges.
Edge's F12 Emulation
To emulate Windows Phones, use Microsoft Edge's built-in emulation.
Since Edge does not ship with legacy compatibility, use IE 11's Emulation to simulate how your page would look in older versions of Internet Explorer.
Device emulators and simulators
Device simulators and emulators simulate not just the browser environment but the entire device. They're useful to test things that require OS integration, for example form input with virtual keyboards.
Android Emulator
Stock Browser in Android Emulator
At the moment, there is no way to install Chrome on an Android emulator. However, you can use the Android Browser, the Chromium Content Shell and Firefox for Android which we'll cover later in this guide. Chromium Content Shell uses the same Chrome rendering engine, but comes without any of the browser specific features.
The Android emulator comes with the Android SDK which you need to download from here. Then follow the instructions to setup a virtual device and start the emulator.
Once your emulator is booted, click on the Browser icon and you'll be able to test your site on the old Stock Browser for Android.
Chromium Content Shell on Android
Android Emulator Content Shell
To install the Chromium Content Shell for Android, leave your emulator running and run the following commands at a command prompt:
git clone https://github.com/PaulKinlan/chromium-android-installer.git
chmod u+x ./chromium-android-installer/\*.sh
./chromium-android-installer/install-chromeandroid.sh
Now you can test your site with the Chromium Content Shell.
Firefox on Android
Firefox Icon on Android Emulator
Similar to Chromium's Content Shell, you can get an APK to install Firefox onto the emulator.
Download the right .apk file from https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/latest/.
From here, you can install the file onto an open emulator or connected Android device with the following command:
adb install <path to APK>/fennec-XX.X.XX.android-arm.apk
iOS Simulator
The iOS simulator for Mac OS X comes with Xcode, which you can install from the App Store.
When you're done, learn how to work with the simulator through Apple's documentation.
Modern.IE
Modern IE VM
Modern.IE Virtual Machines let you access different versions of IE on your computer via VirtualBox (or VMWare). Choose a virtual machine on the download page here.
Cloud-based emulators and simulators
If you can't use the emulators and don't have access to real devices, then cloud-based emulators are the next best thing. A big advantage of cloud-based emulators over real devices and local emulators is that you can automate unit tests for your site across different platforms.
- BrowserStack (commercial) is the easiest to use for manual testing. You select an operating system, select your browser version and device type, select a URL to browse, and it spins up a hosted virtual machine that you can interact with. You can also fire up multiple emulators in the same screen, letting you test how your app looks and feels across multiple devices at the same time.
- SauceLabs (commercial) allows you to run unit tests inside of an emulator, which can be really useful for scripting a flow through your site and watch the video recording of this afterwards on various devices. You can also do manual testing with your site.
- Device Anywhere (commercial) doesn't use emulators but real devices which you can control remotely. This is very useful in the event where you need to reproduce a problem on a specific device and can't see the bug on any of the options in the previous guides.
- LambdaTest (commercial) will help you to perform manual cross browser testing on a combination of 2000+ browsers & operating systems. Users will be able to record video of complex bugs and eve share it via integrations like MS Teams, Slack and more. Users can speed-up their testing by running tests in parallel.