Flow control and logic overview

Overview of flow control: conditions, loops, nested flows, and hooks.

While standard Flows represent linear user journeys, real-world testing often requires dynamic behavior. This section covers the tools that allow your tests to adapt to different application states, platform requirements, and data environments.

Core pillars of Flow architecture

To build scalable tests, you will utilize five pillars:

Selection

Identify UI elements with precision. Before building the test logic, you must master how to use Selectors to ensure Maestro can reliably find and interact with the correct parts of your application screen.

Modularity

Avoid repeating yourself, you can use Nested Flows to extract common journeys, like Login or Onboarding, into separate files. You can then call these "subflows" across your entire suite using the runFlow command.

Conditional execution

Not every test step should run every time. Conditions allow you to execute actions based on element visibility, platform (iOS vs. Android), or custom JavaScript expressions.

Repetition

Handle dynamic lists or "polling" scenarios with Loops to repeat actions until a goal is met. Complement this with Wait Commands to ensure your tests only proceed when the UI is stable, eliminating flakiness from slow network loads.

Environment and lifecycle

Manage test data externally using parameters and constants, allowing the same Flow to run in Staging, QA, or Production. Use Hooks (onFlowStart, onFlowComplete) to automate setup and teardown tasks, such as clearing app state or granting Permissions.