From natural language to UI tests: A deep dive into Journeys for Android Studio

About this episode

The episode discusses the Journeys feature for Android Studio, which utilizes AI to simplify test creation through natural language processing.

Hosts Tor and Chet are joined by Adarsh Fernando, a Product Manager, and Ray Buse, a Software Engineer, to discuss Journeys for Android Studio. Powered by Gemini's vision and reasoning, Journeys aims to simplify end-to-end test creation and maintenance by converting the natural language you provide to describe the steps and assertions for each test, resulting in actions and evaluations performed directly on your app. Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 1:46 - Journeys: New AI-powered testing approach 3:40 - How Journeys Works with Gemini 4:27 - The natural language advantage 5:49 - Real-world use case: Google Maps 6:53 - Debugging with AI reasoning 8:08 - Why Journeys is important: Bridging the testing gap 9:56 - Journeys and End-to-End Testing 12:18 - Performance and Cached Journeys 24:14 - Android Studio and Firebase integration 25:27 - The development workflow 31:22 - AI for everyone: Beyond end-to-end testing 33:28 - Looking ahead: Feedback and the future Resources: Journeys for Android Studio → https://goo.gle/4m9YOr3 App Testing (Android) → https://goo.gle/3HVKTqB Tor on Bluesky → https://goo.gle/3ViCAYS Chet on Bluesky → https://goo.gle/4gzpccM Ardash on Bluesky → https://goo.gle/47JGNw9

People in this episode

Hosts: Tor, Chet

Guests: Adarsh Fernando, Ray Buse

Topics covered

• AI-powered testing
• end-to-end testing
• natural language processing
• Android Studio
• development workflow
• debugging
• performance optimization

Keywords

• Journeys
• Android Studio
• AI testing
• natural language
• test creation
• debugging
• Gemini
• performance
• Firebase
• development workflow

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Google Maps, Android Studio, Firebase, Gemini

More episodes of Android Developers Backstage

• What's so great about R8? · February 18, 2026 · 1h 7m
• XR: Virtually here · January 14, 2026 · 44 min
• Bring your own model - Android Developers Backstage · December 10, 2025 · 58 min
• Android developer verification · September 30, 2025 · 45 min
• Autofill in Compose · August 13, 2025 · 44 min
• Back it up, bring it back: No data left behind · July 10, 2025 · 49 min