Whitelisting

When identifying UI elements, Ranorex Studio and its components scan all running processes on your computer by default. With whitelisting, you tell Ranorex Studio which processes are relevant to your test so it can ignore everything else. This has two main advantages:

• It increases performance during test recording, test execution, and in Ranorex Spy.
• It helps you create clean recordings because you can interact only with whitelisted processes.

Hint: Plan which processes will be part of your test and add them to your whitelist.

1. In Ranorex Studio, go to View > Whitelist. The Whitelist pad opens.
2. If your whitelist is empty, click Edit whitelist… or click the whitelist icon in the top-right corner of the pad.
3. The edit window appears. In it:
   1. Add processes to the whitelist or remove them using the buttons.
   2. If a process isn’t listed on the left, click Add process… to browse to it and add it directly.
   3. Click Advanced… to open a dialog where you can paste a list of process names or specify a range of process names with a regex statement.
      
   4. When you have finished editing the list, click Apply whitelist. Ranorex Studio and its components now recognize UI elements only in the whitelisted processes

Note: Endpoints are not affected by whitelisting, and so will still appear in Spy.

Reference: Find out more about endpoints in Getting started

Result

1. Spy without whitelisting: All UI elements from all running processes are visible. The UI element tree can be large and harder to navigate.
2. Spy with whitelisting enabled and the Ranorex Studio Demo Application in the whitelist: Only UI elements from the Demo Application are visible. The UI element tree is smaller and easier to work with.

Best practices

• Use whitelisting on busy test machines with many background processes.
• Add only the processes that are truly part of your test.
• If Spy or the Recorder can no longer see a UI element, temporarily disable whitelisting or add the missing process to the whitelist.