Overview
Drive real physical phones, tablets, and desktop browsers live in your browser tab — tap, type, install your own app, and capture what you find.
Live puts a real device in your browser tab and lets you drive it — tap, type, scroll, and hear it, in real time.
Phones and tablets are genuine handsets over USB by default; virtual devices — Android emulators and iOS simulators — are an opt-in switch you flip on purpose, never a silent substitute. Desktop browsers run on our own Macs and Windows machines. Live is you at the controls; Automate is your test suite at the controls, on the same hardware.
Key capabilities
Real devices
Real Android and iOS phones and tablets over USB by default. Virtual devices are a separate, opt-in switch.
Desktop browsers
Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on Windows and macOS, plus Safari on macOS. The picker shows the versions available now.
Mobile browsers
Safari and Chrome on a real iPhone; Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera on a real Android.
Install your own app
Upload an .ipa or .apk, or install a published app from the device's own App Store or Play Store using your own account.
Live video + audio
Stream the device and tap, type, and swipe in real time, with audio on most sessions.
Screenshots & recording
Capture screenshots on every session type, and record an MP4 on most of them.
Network, location & files
Go offline or throttle the connection, override GPS, route through a VPN exit IP, set language and timezone, and push files and media.
How Live differs from Automate
Live and Automate use the same real hardware — the difference is who's driving.
| Aspect | Live | Automate |
|---|---|---|
| Who drives the device | A human, in a browser tab | A test script (Selenium / Playwright / Appium, etc.) |
| Interaction | Manual and interactive — tap, type, explore | Scripted and unattended — runs pre-written steps |
| When it runs | Now, when you click Start | On a schedule or in CI/CD |
| Best for | Exploration, debugging, demos, manual QA | Regression, scale, overnight test suites |
Live and Automate are separate subscriptions. A single Live plan unlocks both real-device mobile sessions and desktop browser sessions — they draw from the same allowance.
FAQ
▶Are these real devices or emulators?
By default, phones and tablets are genuine physical devices over USB — real iPhones and real Android phones and tablets. You get real GPUs, real sensors, and real vendor behaviour. Virtual devices — Android emulators and virtual iPhones (iOS simulators) — sit behind a separate switch in the picker; you only ever get one when you choose it.
Desktop browsers run in macOS and Windows virtual machines on our own hardware. That's a real Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari on a real operating system — not a rendering emulation or a device-mode preview.
▶Can I install my own app?
Yes. You can upload your own .ipa (iOS) or .apk (Android) and TestKase installs it on the real device — no Apple ID needed. iOS uploads must be a development or ad-hoc build; an encrypted App Store .ipa is rejected.
For published apps, the device's own App Store (iOS) or Play Store (Android) opens on screen and you sign in with your own account.
Signing into the App Store erases the iPhone. Apple gives us no way to sign an Apple ID back out, so a session that ends with an account signed in triggers an automatic full erase and rebuild of that phone — your account, downloads, and everything else on it go with the wipe. Use a throwaway Apple ID. See Installing Apps.
▶How many free minutes do I get?
The Live plan includes a one-time lifetime free allowance of 15 minutes, shared across your mobile and browser sessions. It's a lifetime pool — it doesn't reset each month. Paid tiers remove the minute cap and raise how many sessions you can run in parallel. See Reference.