Automating tests on an application hosted in Citrix

Miscellaneous
1

Is it possible to automate tests on an application hosted in Citrix? If not, then how about applications running in Windows Remote Desktop?

2

Hi there,

Thank you very much for your topic. Please note that it may take a little while before a member of our community or from Katalon team responds to you.

Thanks!

3

Hi @g.goodwin,

Welcome to our community. You can integrate Katalon with Citrix. Although I do not know quite well about it, let’s look forward to more sharing from others

4

Did you guys find any solution for this?

5

Let me bring the expert here to assist you @kazurayam @depapp @Monty_Bagati :face_with_monocle:, do you have any solutions for this

6

Citrix has no native support from katalon.

For rdp , run katalon inside the rdp env treating it as a local os

7

@yubraj @g.goodwin

The main challenge with automating applications hosted on Citrix or Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) is that the UI is rendered as a remote image rather than native UI elements. Because of this, automation tools like Katalon or Selenium cannot directly inspect the DOM or interact with UI objects.

If automation is still required in such environments, the common approach is to use image-based automation. Tools like Sikuli or Robot Framework rely on screenshot comparison to identify and interact with UI elements such as buttons and input fields. In some cases, coordinate-based actions are also used, though they tend to be less stable.

Additionally, tools like UiPath and Automation Anywhere provide Citrix-specific plugins that use OCR and computer vision (CV) to improve interaction reliability.

Best possibilities

If possible:

  1. Run your automation inside the Citrix/RDP environment

  2. Prefer API/backend testing instead of UI automation

  3. Request access to a non-Citrix test environment for stable automation

8

hi @g.goodwin

Katalon cannot automate applications delivered via Citrix. Citrix renders the remote session as a single image stream on the client side, so there are no accessible UI elements for Katalon to interact with. Image-based automation tools like Eggplant or Tricentis NeoLoad are better suited for that scenario.

for RDP, the standard approach is to install and run Katalon Studio directly inside the remote desktop session. from Katalon’s perspective, it is just automating a local Windows machine. Do not try to automate the RDP session from the client side, as you will hit the same image-only limitation as Citrix
one catch: if the RDP session disconnects or minimizes, the GUI becomes unavailable and tests will fail. Keep the session active and unlocked, or use console/headless execution where possible