I’ve been using a simple flag in Swift that detects if I’m running tests so I can modify my AppDelegate all programmatically so I can safely run the app or run tests without having to change code. For the past month or so I’ve been using something like the following in my AppDelegate:

class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {

  func application(application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject: AnyObject]?) -> Bool {
    let runningTests = (NSClassFromString("XCTest") != nil)
    // ...
  }

}

This proved to work when running the app or tests in the simulator or building to a device.. until today. I spent hours debugging why this app I’ve just setup with TestFlight was crashing at the launch image. I finally learned that runningTests line was the culprit. I tried other alternatives like how Artsy does in their Eidolon app. I updated my code to use that approach, uploaded a new binary and installed an update through TestFlight. That update showed that the device was executing that test environment specific code although we weren’t running tests, the app is in a release state.

As a last resort I ported the isRunningTests approach in the objc.io Testing View Controllers article to Swift and included it in my app (the final code can be seen below). Thankfully after uploading the binary and installing the app from TestFlight it proved successful.

class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {

  func application(application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject: AnyObject]?) -> Bool {
    if isRunningTests() {
      // ..
    }
  }

  func isRunningTests() -> Bool {
    let environment = NSProcessInfo.processInfo().environment
    let injectBundle = environment["XCInjectBundle"] as String?
    return (injectBundle?.pathExtension == "xctest")
  }

}

I’ve seen approaches on changing build settings. I wasn’t familiar with the differences in developing, building and releasing so I wanted a simple code only solution. Luckily this worked great. Be careful if using NSClassFromString in this case (releasing an app) and probably best to avoid it.