Comments on: Combining Reflector and Silverback for iOS Usability Testing

By: Puneet Sharma

Puneet Sharma — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:43:30 +0000

BugClipper is an iOS SDK that allows you to capture screen videos with voice on your iDevice. It easily fits inside the app and lets you do a lot more. http://www.bugclipper.com

By: Theresa

Theresa — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:24:10 +0000

This is the solution that I use for my mobile user testing. However we need to user test an android only app, so does anyone know of a similar solution for android?

Also, when I’m on a network that blocks Airplay, I use a USB cord and the iTools (http://itools.hk/en_index.htm) mirroring function instead of Reflector.

By: Harry Brignull

Harry Brignull — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:13:43 +0000

UX Recorder is Web only – it’ll record usage of web pages, but not apps. I’ve also heard that the recordings aren’t quite as good, so that’s worth checking before picking a solution.

By: Philippe Gaboury

Philippe Gaboury — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:56:05 +0000

I’ve found UX Recorder in the Apple App store for iPhone and iPad and it basically does all that Silverback does for the mac but on mobile devices, capturing interactions at the same time as capturing the front-facing cam.

I have not tried it myself but it seems like a much less complicated option.

By: Justin Copeland

Justin Copeland — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:12:17 +0000

To get around the problem of not seeing where the user is touching the screen, if you are testing on your build, you can integrate Touchpose (https://github.com/toddreed/Touchpose) which will display where the user is touching the screen on mirrored displays such as your Reflector screen.

By: Viet

Viet — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 22:59:46 +0000

We’re going to start using the same combination of Reflector and Silverback, but previously we were just using Reflector and the built-in screen recording option in QuickTime. This allows you to record the app usage in addition to any voice recording of the user using the app.

A more rudimentary way we’ve done to record video of the user and stream to another room is simply initiating an iMessage video or Skype video chat and recording the screen to another room.

By: Bill Wessel

Bill Wessel — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:00:42 +0000

Thanks for the tips Harry. If you need a bit more range we’ve found an Apple TV works quite well for beaming out the footage a bit further without the need for wiring. Although you lose the ability to record the footage. For all the PC users out there, there is also some software called AirServer for PC (and Mac too) that does much the same thing as Reflector (but even allows multiple iOS devices to stream to it at once).