SmartBear Advances TestComplete with Vision AI, Enabling Automated Testing for Highly Critical Visual Applications
SmartBear, helping teams build, test, and ship quality software at AI speed and scale, has announced the first platform to unify property-based, OCR, and vision AI — expanding coverage, reducing risk, and perceiving applications the way humans do. This new functionality will automate testing of highly visual applications that have traditionally been tested manually due to their complexity, which historically led to poorer coverage and elevated risk exposure.
Automating testing across all application types is growing increasingly important as AI accelerates code and application creation. The TestComplete enhancement will be especially beneficial for business-critical applications, including 3D tools like CAD, canvas-based platforms like Google Maps, virtualized environments like Citrix, and complex web and desktop applications featuring advanced graphs and charts such as those in Tableau, SAP, and Oracle.
Without automated testing for highly visual applications, new releases or updates may be delayed — or worse, shipped after less rigorous manual review due to market pressure. This builds company-wide risk. When a critical business application such as a financial chart or graph fails to function as intended, business analysis can be delayed or, more critically, the data used to make decisions can be misrepresented.
"AI is writing code faster than humans or traditional automation can test it and visual applications are the last frontier where automated testing has failed to work. TestComplete now helps close the testing gap created by AI by adding vision AI, enabling teams to finally automate testing where they need it most: in visual business-critical applications to reduce risk and broaden test coverage."
— Prashant Mohan, Vice President of Product, SmartBear
An Industry-First Approach to Visual Object Detection
TestComplete now provides an industry-first visual object detection approach comparable to human perception — something no competing solution has previously achieved for applications beyond web testing. Its core advantage lies in flexible object recognition: teams can capture and identify objects through multiple methods, enabling reliable testing across diverse application technologies and complex user interfaces.
Adding vision AI expands TestComplete's ability to recognize UI elements visually even when traditional object properties are limited, unstable, or unavailable. The platform evaluates applications the way a human eye would — rather than by replicating code-based properties — making tests far more resilient to subtle application changes and producing greater release confidence.
Three Recognition Methods, One Unified Platform
The new capability complements and extends TestComplete's existing object recognition features to deliver what SmartBear describes as the most comprehensive automated test coverage available on the market today.
Property-Based Recognition
The foundational layer of TestComplete testing, identifying UI elements by their underlying code properties. Reliable and precise for traditional desktop and web applications where object attributes are stable and accessible.
OCR Text Extraction
Optical character recognition enables testing of applications where text is rendered as an image rather than as addressable HTML or native UI elements — covering virtualized environments like Citrix and scanned document interfaces.
Vision AI Object Detection
The newest layer mimics how a human eye perceives an interface, recognizing visual elements even when code-based properties are unavailable. Ideal for 3D applications, canvas-based tools, complex charts, and heavily customized enterprise UIs.
Accelerating Release Velocity Without Sacrificing Quality
Because TestComplete now tests how an application is supposed to behave — rather than how its underlying code is supposed to function — test maintenance becomes substantially easier. Teams can automate regression tests and keep pace with application changes without extensive code revisions, a significant time saver and competitive advantage in an era where AI-driven development is accelerating the pace of delivery.
This approach makes tests more resilient to subtle application changes, producing more stable test suites and greater overall release confidence. With expanded automated test coverage and streamlined maintenance, testing teams can focus on quality rather than ongoing code revision.
Supported Application Types
Key Takeaways
SmartBear has launched an industry-first unified platform combining property-based recognition, OCR, and vision AI inside TestComplete — the broadest automated testing coverage available for visual applications.
Vision AI enables TestComplete to perceive applications the way humans do, recognizing UI elements even when traditional code-based object properties are limited, unstable, or absent.
The enhancement directly targets business-critical visual applications — CAD tools, Citrix environments, Tableau, SAP, and Oracle — where manual testing gaps have historically created significant release risk.
By testing application behavior rather than underlying code, TestComplete makes regression tests more resilient to UI changes, reducing maintenance overhead and accelerating release velocity.
The visual object detection capability is available today and forms part of SmartBear's broader commitment to delivering AI-powered innovation across the entire software development lifecycle.
TestComplete is a core component of SmartBear's integrated solution for managing, automating, and executing all tests in one place — enabling customers to achieve genuine application integrity. The platform's newest vision AI capability is already available, with detailed documentation accessible through SmartBear's support portal for teams ready to begin automating their most visually complex workflows.
SmartBear is trusted by more than 16 million developers, testers, and software engineers across 32,000 organizations worldwide, including 75% of the largest financial institutions and industry leaders such as Adobe, JetBlue, and Microsoft. To learn more about TestComplete's vision AI capabilities and SmartBear's full portfolio of testing and observability tools, visit www.smartbear.com.
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