Perforce Perfecto 26.9: More Accurate Quality Metrics and Broader iOS Test Coverage

Failure-reason exclusion now lets release owners remove approved non-product failure categories from Perfecto reporting totals while retaining the original execution evidence. That matters when executive scorecards and CI quality gates need to reflect actionable product risk rather than recurring lab, infrastructure, or known-exception noise.

Make quality metrics more decision-ready

Perfecto 26.9 adds failure-reason exclusion to the Report Library, CI Dashboard, Insights, and Heatmap. Teams can filter selected reasons from reporting views and totals without deleting the related test results.

This creates a clearer separation between two important measures:

• Raw execution reliability: every result, including environmental and platform-related failures
• Release-quality signal: failures that should influence product readiness decisions

The control should not become a way to improve reported pass rates. Establish a governed list of eligible exclusions, assign ownership for each category, and review excluded volumes regularly. A sudden increase in excluded failures can indicate deteriorating test infrastructure, device availability, or integration health even when product metrics remain stable.

Extend iOS automation options with Playwright beta

Perfecto 26.9 introduces beta support for Playwright automation on real iOS devices running iOS 18 or later. The capability supports Playwright 1.62 through the Node.js SDK for JavaScript and TypeScript, using the same WebSocket connection model used for Android testing.

For teams standardizing web automation around Playwright, this offers a practical path to evaluate iOS browser coverage without maintaining entirely separate tooling patterns. It is beta support, so it should be introduced through a controlled pilot rather than immediately placed in release-blocking pipelines.

A sensible adoption sequence includes:

• Select a small set of high-value iOS web journeys.
• Compare execution behavior against existing Selenium or Appium coverage.
• Record unsupported scenarios and timing differences.
• Define exit criteria before expanding CI use.
• Keep a fallback suite for release-critical workflows.

This keeps toolchain experimentation from creating an ungoverned gap in mobile release assurance.

Improve mobile test realism and failure behavior

Android airplane-mode control has been restored through the Set network settings command for devices running Android 10 (SDK 29) or later. Older devices now return an explicit unsupported error instead of appearing to accept a command that has no effect.

That explicit failure is operationally valuable. Test owners can distinguish unsupported-device conditions from application behavior, then route the result correctly in triage and reporting.

The release also adds en-GB and en-DE as selectable device-language options for Appium automation, manual testing, and Scriptless flows. These settings support English-language validation with United Kingdom and Germany regional contexts, helping teams test formatting, regional content behavior, and locale-dependent flows before release.

Strengthen enterprise-signed iOS app operations

CertKeeper now supports multiple concurrently installed keepers. Organizations can configure separate enterprise identities for different environments, certificates, or application portfolios when installing enterprise-signed iOS applications.

For large mobile estates, this reduces a common operational constraint: one identity configuration may not represent every application or environment that needs testing. The benefit is most meaningful when paired with ownership controls.

Teams should maintain:

• An inventory of enterprise identities and associated applications
• Clear separation of development, test, and pre-production configurations
• Certificate expiry monitoring and renewal procedures
• Access controls for identity configuration changes
• Evidence of installation and trust failures for incident analysis

Advance visual, accessibility, and framework workflows

AI Scriptless now provides a baseline picker for AI Visual Comparison. Authors can search existing baselines, review thumbnails, select an established baseline, or create a new one while configuring the command.

This reduces baseline-selection ambiguity, but visual baselines still need governance. Teams should define who can create or replace baselines, capture the reason for material UI changes, and tie approvals to product or design evidence. Otherwise, baseline updates can hide unintended visual regressions.

For accessibility testing on iOS 27.0 Beta 5 and later, VoiceOver audio requires the device volume to remain unmuted. On iOS 27 Beta 7, touch behavior while accessibility testing is enabled may be interpreted as VoiceOver input and cause touch errors. These are platform constraints that should be documented in accessibility test plans, especially for beta OS certification work.

Quantum 3.2.7 is also available, with Perfecto Reportium updated to version 4.4.9, improved context retrieval and switching behavior, and security fixes. Framework upgrades should follow normal dependency governance: validate representative suites, check report integrations, and promote through controlled CI stages.

Update coverage matrices before pipeline changes

Perfecto 26.9 expands real-device support to iOS 27 Beta 7, iOS 26.6.1 GA, and iOS 18.7.10. It also adds iOS 27 Beta 6 for virtual devices, Appium 3.1, 3.2, 3.5, and 3.6 for virtual devices, and new Chrome, Firefox, and Edge versions on Windows and Mac.

Coverage expansion is useful only when test selection stays intentional. Release owners should update their supported-platform matrix and identify which additions are exploratory, certification-oriented, or release-blocking.

Important compatibility points include:

• Safari tests using driver.get() can fail on iOS 26.6.1 and 18.7.10 because Page.navigate is unavailable; use the documented executeScript navigation workaround.
• Virtual devices on iOS 26.4 or later require ARM64 application builds; Intel-only x86_64 builds cannot run.
• Teams must set the appiumVersion capability when a specific virtual-device Appium version is required.
• iOS 27 beta coverage should be isolated from general availability certification metrics unless the organization explicitly supports that beta platform.

How Merito helps

Merito helps enterprises introduce Perfecto 26.9 without weakening release controls. We can map failure categories to reporting policy, build adoption plans for iOS Playwright beta, update device and browser coverage matrices, and establish evidence requirements for visual baselines and enterprise iOS identities.

The result is a release workflow where new test capability is measured against risk, ownership, and audit needs—not simply enabled because it is available.

Merito is an authorized Perforce reseller and services partner. Our Perforce Perfecto team can scope licensing, sizing, and rollout for 26.9, and our enterprise upgrade services help you plan and validate the upgrade with minimal disruption to release schedules.