test(appium): fix login logic for BrowserStack

Author: fadi-george

appium/tests/helpers/app.ts

@@ -179,17 +179,22 @@ export async function waitForAppReady(opts: { skipLogin?: boolean } = {}) {
 
   if (skipLogin) return;
 
-  // want to login user so we can't clean up/delete user data for the next rerun
+  // Want to login the user so we can clean up/delete its data on the next rerun.
+  // The sharedStore cache is a local-only optimization: locally we reuse the same
+  // emulator/simulator across specs, so once we've logged in we can skip the
+  // text-check on subsequent specs. On BrowserStack each parallel session lands
+  // on a fresh device, so the flag would lie about another session's state.
   const testUserId = getTestExternalId();
-  const loggedIn = await browser.sharedStore.get('loggedIn');
-  if (!loggedIn) {
-    const userIdEl = await scrollToEl('user_external_id_value', { direction: 'up' });
-    const sessionUserId = await userIdEl.getText();
-    if (sessionUserId !== testUserId) {
-      await loginUser(testUserId);
-    }
-    await browser.sharedStore.set('loggedIn', true);
+  const isLocal = !process.env.BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME;
+
+  if (isLocal && (await browser.sharedStore.get('loggedIn'))) return;
+
+  const userIdEl = await scrollToEl('user_external_id_value', { direction: 'up' });
+  const sessionUserId = await userIdEl.getText();
+  if (sessionUserId !== testUserId) {
+    await loginUser(testUserId);
   }
+  if (isLocal) await browser.sharedStore.set('loggedIn', true);
 }
 
 /**

appium/wdio.shared.conf.ts

@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ const bstackOptions = {
 export const sharedConfig: WebdriverIO.Config = {
   ...(isLocal ? localConnection : browserstackConnection),
 
-  maxInstances: 1,
+  maxInstances: isLocal ? 1 : undefined,
   logLevel: 'warn',
 
   specs: ['./tests/specs/**/*.spec.ts'],