NOTE: virtualUSB macOS is General Availability; virtualUSB Windows is currently in beta. We welcome your feedback at support@kobiton.com
virtualUSB allows users to develop, debug, and test apps on Private and Local mobile devices hosted on the Kobiton Portal.
virtualUSB is available as an option for the Enterprise plan. Please contact support@kobiton.com or your Account Executive if you are interested in adding this feature.
See the macOS or Windows installation and configuration guides for how to set up and configure virtualUSB. Once the setup is done, open virtualUSB and start exploring the features below.
To use virtualUSB via a command-line interface, see this guide.
Device list
The first thing you'll see when you sign into virtualUSB is the list of the Private and Local online devices assigned to you (from all of your assigned teams):
With the above list, you can:
- Use the search bar on top of the device list to find devices by Display Name, Model Name, or UDID.
- Hover on a device's Display Name, Model Name, or UDID to show the full text when the text is long. You can also copy the information by clicking the Copy icon:
Connect to a device
On the device list, select the Connect button for a device:
Once connected:
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The device status changes to Retained. This status persists for 24 hours unless the device is disconnected sooner or the virtualUSB app is inactive for 1 hour.
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The Connection Status column displays the value Connected.
Repeat the above step to connect to additional devices.
To filter and view the list currently connected devices, select the Show Connected Devices checkbox on the right of the search bar. Unselect the checkbox to clear the filter and view all devices.
Check connected devices
Android devices
In Android Studio, select Device Manager from the run configurations dropdown menu:
Select the Physical tab to see the list of connected devices:
iOS devices
On a macOS workstation, connected iOS devices can be accessed via Xcode:
Note: in releases of virtualUSB prior to Kobiton 4.1, iOS devices could also be seen in Finder. This option is no longer available.
On a Windows workstation, virtualUSB supports communicating with iOS devices via tools such as libimobiledevice. Below is an example of libimobiledevice showing the UDID and name of an iOS device:
Launch a manual session
To observe what is happening on the device screen while connected to a device via virtualUSB, sign in to the Kobiton Portal, find the device, and launch a manual session with a virtualUSB. (Hint: copy the device UDID from virtualUSB and paste it in the search bar of the Kobiton Portal Device List.)
Manual sessions will end after staying idle for a certain period of time. To prevent an accidental session end, open the Manual Session Settings while in the manual session, uncheck Quit session after staying idle for 10 minutes in the pop-up, and click Apply.
Disconnect a device
To disconnect and release a device back to the team, go to virtualUSB and click Disconnect under the Action column:
Confirm the action by selecting Disconnect in the next dialog:
Save logs
There are 2 methods to save logs of activities in the virtualUSB app:
From the menu bar
On the menu bar, select Help, Save Logs, then select a time range. A zip archive containing all the logs in the selected period will be downloaded. See below for the menu bar location.
iOS:
Windows:
From the virtualUSB home screen
Select the Save Logs icon:
In the next dialog, choose a time period from the dropdown list and select Save. A zip archive containing all the logs in the selected period will be downloaded.
Limitations
- An Org Admin is able to cancel a device retained for virtualUSB. Once cancelled, the device will be released i.e. that device is no longer connected with the user's workstation. However, in this case, the user will see Connection status as Error and the button stays at Disconnect.To re-connect to this device, the user needs to disconnect and then connect again.
- After selecting Connect for a device, users may occasionally see the connection status change to Offline or Error before showing Connected. Kobiton will address this behavior in an upcoming release.
- If a user right-clicks on any part of the virtualUSB app and selects Reload, the user will be directed back to the login page and need to sign in again.
- You cannot run virtualUSB from a Mac that has deviceConnect or Kobiton Desktop installed.
- Device connection status is not synced across machines when a user logs into virtualUSB on different machines simultaneously.
- When a device is connected via virtualUSB and you restart the device:
- the virtualUSB connection will be re-established.
- the device status will be back to Retained until timed out.
- The connection status of the devices may not stay in sync between the virtualUSB UI and virtualUSB command-line interface (CLI). Use only the GUI or only the CLI when connecting and disconnecting devices.
- Within the zip file exported using the save log feature, the created and modified date time of some of the files and folders are displayed incorrectly as January 1, 1980 at 12:00 AM.