How to Fix an Unreal Automation Spec Not Showing in the Test Runner

Unreal discovers automation specs at module load via macros and flags. A wrong flag combination or a module the editor never loads hides the spec from the Automation tab.

How to fix it

1. Use the right flags

Declare with DEFINE_SPEC(FMySpec, "Game.Combat", EAutomationTestFlags::EditorContext | EAutomationTestFlags::ProductFilter). A context flag with no filter flag, or vice versa, can exclude it from the list.

2. Make sure the module loads

Put the spec in a module marked to load in the editor (for example a Developer or UncookedOnly module), since automation registration only runs for loaded modules.

3. Refresh and check the filter

In the Session Frontend Automation tab click refresh and clear the filter box; the test name is the string in the macro, so a typo there changes where it appears in the tree.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unreal Engine error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.