Visual smoke test setup
How to set up a visual smoke test
This guide outlines how to create and modify a visual smoke test.
Creating a visual smoke test
To create a new visual smoke test, click on the home icon in the top-left corner. Then follow these steps:
- Click on the New button.
- Select "Visual test" from the dropdown to load the visual smoke test creation form.

The visual smoke test creation form
- Give your test a name in the Test name field.
- Enter up to 50 page URLs in the Top pages field.
- Add the test to an existing plan or create a new plan.
- If you create a new plan, select the application and environment for the plan.
- If the URLs listed in the Top pages field require a logged-in status, add an auto-login flow by following these additional steps:
- Toggle on Show advanced options
- Toggle on Add login flow. This action adds an auto-login flow to the beginning of the visual smoke test so that you can access URLs that require authentication in your app.
- If the test is part of a new plan, indicate which credentials you want to use for login.
- Click on the Create test button.
After creating the test, the app loads the Test Details page with a list of pages to visit and a mabl-generated flow called "Visual Smoke Test."

Test Details page for a visual smoke test
Using variables in URLs
When composing the list of pages to visit, you can use the following variables:
{{@web.defaults.url}}
: This variable is automatically assigned the application URL from the plan.- Environment variables
For example, if you are running a visual smoke test in staging and production environments, you can write the URL as follows: {{@web.defaults.url}}/product
.
- In the staging environment, the URL becomes
https://staging.mabl.com/product
. - In the production environment, the URL becomes
https://mabl.com/product
.
Editing visual smoke tests
The following properties can be edited in visual smoke tests:
List of URLs
Click on the pencil icon next to "Pages to visit."
Test metadata
Click on the pencil icon in the top-left corner to update test name, description, and labels.
Editing limitations
The test steps for a visual smoke test are auto-generated by mabl. For this reason, it is not possible to add or edit test steps in a visual smoke test:
- The viewport cannot be changed and is currently set to 1366 x 3072 for all browsers.
- Wait steps cannot be added to a visual smoke test.
- Visual smoke tests do not support additional features available in browser tests, such as automatic popup dismissal or Intelligent Wait.
Visual change learning to identify dynamic content regions is not yet supported for visual smoke tests. It is not yet possible to specify regions to ignore for visual change detection in visual smoke tests.
If you would like us to prioritize addressing these limitations, or want to request additional features, please let us know at productportal.mabl.com.
Updated 4 months ago