Test animations

Compose offers ComposeTestRule that lets you write tests for animations in a deterministic manner with full control over the test clock. This lets you verify intermediate animation values. In addition, a test can run quicker than the actual duration of the animation.

ComposeTestRule exposes its test clock as mainClock. You can set the autoAdvance property to false to control the clock in your test code. After initiating the animation you want to test, the clock can be moved forward with advanceTimeBy.

One thing to note here is that advanceTimeBy doesn't move the clock exactly by the specified duration. Rather, it rounds it up to the nearest duration that is a multiplier of the frame duration.

@get:Rule
val rule = createComposeRule()

@Test
fun testAnimationWithClock() {
    // Pause animations
    rule.mainClock.autoAdvance = false
    var enabled by mutableStateOf(false)
    rule.setContent {
        val color by animateColorAsState(
            targetValue = if (enabled) Color.Red else Color.Green,
            animationSpec = tween(durationMillis = 250)
        )
        Box(Modifier.size(64.dp).background(color))
    }

    // Initiate the animation.
    enabled = true

    // Let the animation proceed.
    rule.mainClock.advanceTimeBy(50L)

    // Compare the result with the image showing the expected result.
    // `assertAgainGolden` needs to be implemented in your code.
    rule.onRoot().captureToImage().assertAgainstGolden()
}

Optimize animation tests

When testing high-fidelity animations, you often need to disable auto-advance and manually step through frames to assert intermediate UI states. For these specific frame-by-frame loops, use the runWithoutImplicitWait method to execute your assertions. Standard node queries (like onNodeWithTag or fetchSemanticsNode) trigger implicit synchronizations that are redundant when you are manually controlling the clock, so bypassing them significantly speeds up your test runtimes.

Usage guidelines

  • Manual clock management: Use this API when mainClock.autoAdvance is set to false and the UI is in a known, stable state for the current frame.
  • UI thread execution: To ensure the stability of the UI tree, call runWithoutImplicitWait on the UI thread, such as with runOnUiThread. Running it off the UI thread exposes your test to race conditions and stale state reads.
  • Read-only assertions: The block should strictly contain read-only assertions. Any actions that mutate state should be performed outside of this block.

Example

@Test
fun runWithoutImplicitWaitSample() = runComposeUiTest {
    setContent { MainScreen() }
    mainClock.autoAdvance = false

    // Trigger an animation
    onNodeWithText("Start Animation").performClick()

    // Step through the animation frame-by-frame
    while (hasPendingWork()) {
        mainClock.advanceTimeByFrame()
        waitForIdle()
        runOnUiThread {
            // Suppress implicit synchronization inside this block to avoid redundant
            // waits on each node query, making the frame assertions execute much faster.
            runWithoutImplicitWait {
                val box1 = onNodeWithTag("Box1").fetchSemanticsNode()
                val box2 = onNodeWithTag("Box2").fetchSemanticsNode()
                val box3 = onNodeWithTag("Box3").fetchSemanticsNode()

                // Assert the exact intermediate state of all three properties for this frame
                assert(box1.boundsInRoot.right <= box2.boundsInRoot.left)
                assert(box2.boundsInRoot.right <= box3.boundsInRoot.left)
            }
        }
    }
}

Previous
Customize animations
Next
Tools