Graphical User Interface (GUI) has become one of the most significant parts of mobile applications (apps). It is a direct bridge between mobile apps and end users, which directly affects the end user's experience. Neglecting GUI quality can undermine the value and effectiveness of the entire mobile app solution. Significant research efforts have been devoted to GUI testing, one effective method to ensure mobile app quality. By conducting rigorous GUI testing, developers can ensure that the visual and interactive elements of the mobile apps not only meet functional requirements but also provide a seamless and user-friendly experience. However, traditional solutions, relying on the source code or layout files, have met challenges in both effectiveness and efficiency due to the gap between what is obtained and what app GUI actually presents. Vision-based mobile app GUI testing approaches emerged with the development of computer vision technologies and have achieved promising progress. In this survey paper, we provide a comprehensive investigation of the state-of-the-art techniques on 226 papers, among which 78 are vision-based studies. This survey covers different topics of GUI testing, like GUI test generation, GUI test record & replay, GUI testing framework, etc. Specifically, the research emphasis of this survey is placed mostly on how vision-based techniques outperform traditional solutions and have gradually taken a vital place in the GUI testing field. Based on the investigation of existing studies, we outline the challenges and opportunities of (vision-based) mobile app GUI testing and propose promising research directions with the combination of emerging techniques.

翻译：图形用户界面（GUI）已成为移动应用程序（app）最重要的组成部分之一，它是移动应用与最终用户之间的直接桥梁，直接影响用户体验。忽视GUI质量会损害整个移动应用解决方案的价值和有效性。大量研究工作致力于GUI测试——一种确保移动应用质量的有效方法。通过严格的GUI测试，开发者能够确保移动应用的视觉和交互元素不仅满足功能需求，还能提供无缝且用户友好的体验。然而，传统解决方案依赖源代码或布局文件，由于其获取的信息与app GUI实际呈现之间存在差距，在有效性和效率方面均面临挑战。随着计算机视觉技术的发展，基于视觉的移动应用GUI测试方法应运而生，并取得了显著进展。在本综述中，我们对226篇论文（其中78篇为基于视觉的研究）中的最新技术进行了全面调研。本综述涵盖GUI测试的不同主题，如GUI测试生成、GUI测试录制与回放、GUI测试框架等。特别地，本综述的研究重点主要放在基于视觉的技术如何优于传统解决方案，并逐步在GUI测试领域占据重要地位。基于对现有研究的调研，我们概述了（基于视觉的）移动应用GUI测试面临的挑战与机遇，并提出了结合新兴技术的潜在研究方向。