Everyday Tools, In a life of Software QA

Abiral Sthapit
5 min readMar 1, 2021

In past I have come across a lot of tools that helped me testing or in some ways made me more productive, so in this story I am going to list them all. I hope this will help lot like me out there reading this.

  1. Lightshot
    A free to use screenshot taking tool
  2. Grammarly
    A free to use grammar checking tool (available both chrome extension and windows app)
  3. JSON editor online
    A free web based json editor, formatter and easy json data sharing tool
  4. Screencastify
    A free chrome extension for recording screen or chrome tab
  5. Google Keep
    A free (gmail account needed) tool for taking note, the notes are easily accessible, best used for quick note taking and todo creation (checklist)
  6. Google doc and Google Sheet
    A free tool for various purposes (quick documenting, reporting, etc) very versatile tools
  7. Gmail, outlook
    A free email services, probably the identity of a person in the web.
  8. Jira
    Not a Free tool but a very powerful project management tool, lots of feature, lots of addons
  9. Confluence
    Not a free tool, provides a team workspace can be used for various purposes like idea sharing, retrospective, meeting notes, project documentation, blogs, etc
  10. Testrail
    Not a free tool but one of the best test case management tool and has strong Integration with jira.
  11. Bug Magnet
    Exploratory testing assistant for Chrome, provides easy edge case values on some clicks
  12. Form Filler
    Easy form filler, In case of long boring forms every time filling every field is very tiresome.
  13. Postman
    A free tool for API testing and validating.
  14. Curl
    A free tool for sending request from any sort of command line application
  15. Jmeter
    A free tool for load creation and reporting, mostly used for load and performance testing and monitoring
  16. Test Heuristic cheat sheet
    A mind mapping cheat sheet, provides a great starting ground for start of the project
  17. Big List of Naughty Strings
    Generating list of string that can potentially break the whole application
  18. Wox
    A full-featured launcher, access programs and web contents as you type. Get mac like feel in windows.
  19. Kibana
    Good Monitoring tool, can be used in various scenarios
  20. Datadog
    Good Monitoring tool, can be used in various scenarios (not free)
  21. Mockaroo
    A free web based service use to create dummy data (limited data generation capacity)
  22. TailGate
    Real time log watching service for simple node application (can be integrated with express for some quick and free monitoring of application)
  23. Stackoverflow
    Best service so far, can find answer to almost every question asked so far.
  24. PQIP
    A concept of communicating with the team which was practice during the Client communication. Simon Tomes twitter post explained it the best why to use it Link.
  25. Exploratory Testing Chrome Extension
    A easy tool to use while testing the web App, we can easily implement the above PQIP model with this tool.
  26. Bash cheat sheet
    Bash always comes in mind when we talk about automation there are tons of things we can do with bash, so this cheat sheet will help us create that super nifty scripts
  27. Git
    A free to use version control tool and probably the most famous one too
  28. Github / Bitbucket / Gitlab
    A free to use repository management tool that uses git
  29. Markdown cheat sheet
    A quick note with markdown either readme or some short gist, this cheat sheet will help add those checkboxes and blockades,etc
  30. Java
    A very popular programming language with strong OOP concepts, probably the best programming language to learn if one wants to learn about OOP
  31. JavaScript
    A very popular language for browser, now it is used everywhere.
  32. ES6 cheat sheet
    Learning Js and mastering it are two different things this cheat sheet will help on those nifty little feature provided by Js
  33. JsDoc cheat sheet
    Want to document the the JS code, this cheat sheet will help with that
  34. Xpath cheat sheet
    Understanding the xpath has never been more easier with this cheat sheet.
  35. Node
    A powerful server application
  36. Python
    A powerful and popular programing language, for me it was super easily for some quick data visualization needs
  37. Selenium
    A browser automating framework.
  38. Selenium Webdriver
    Driver needed for the Selenium framework to automate the browser, consist of strong implementation with chrome driver, geko driver,etc
  39. Selenim IDE
    A browser recorder tool that can capture the user actions in the web and replay them, can also generate the selenium script in various programming language
  40. Cucumber
    A framework for defining tests into BDD pattern. uses Gerkin language to define a test as a feature by binding it into Scenario, Given, When, Then
  41. Junit
    A testing framework consisting of defining and asserting of tests also a medium for access it and running them
  42. TestNG
    Similar to Junit but more advance form of testing framework
  43. Cypress
    A testing framework for web based project. It provides similar functionalizes like selenium but in a lot better ways
  44. Nightwatch.js
    A testing framework like Junit and TestNG in js
  45. Express js
    A free to use framework for node application (lightweight and quick for prototyping)
  46. Nestjs
    A free to use framework for node application (used for more robust product creation)
  47. Reactjs
    A free to use node framework for frontend application
  48. pm2
    A process manager for node (it is alot easier than forever and provides a good nerd stats)
  49. pm2 cheat sheet
    Cheat sheet to master pm2
  50. Cross Browser Testing
    A paid service that provides real and emulated browsers which can also be used for automation (can be accessible through selenium grid)
  51. Saucelabs
    Same as Crossbrowser
  52. BrowserStack
    Same as crossbrowser
  53. Chocolatey
    A package manager tool for windows (easy command line installation and removal ofprogram)
  54. Clockify
    The most popular free time tracker for teams and personal use
  55. Tag Assistance Legacy (by google)
    This chrome extension is useful if one needs to quicly verify the google tag scripts
  56. Facebook Pixel Helper
    troubleshooting tool that helps to validate fb pixel implementation.
  57. Moesif Origin & COROS changer
    This plugin allows you to send cross-domain requests. You can also override Request Origin and CORS headers.
  58. Tabbie
    Easily manage the chrome tabs, Get relief from the tab nightmares in chrome while researching.
  59. Docker
    A open sourced and free to use tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers.
  60. Jenkins
    Open source automation server, that helps in building, deploying and automating any project tasks
  61. VS Code
    Free to use open sourced light weight code editor, with hundreds of plugins for every kind of situation.
  62. FIgma
    Quick mockup / concept design tool.
  63. HackMD
    Real-time collaborate on personal/project/team documentation in markdown.
  64. Stackblitz
    Online Visual Studio code editor.
  65. Gitpod
    An open source platform for automated and ready-to-code development environments that blends into your existing workflow.
  66. ClickUp
    A Free to use powerful Task management/project management tool, good for a simple side hustle.
  67. ChatGPT
    A Free to use powerful AI, ask anything it will be able to answer most of the queries you have, either for study/research, code, error in your code, etc

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