We also published new and expanded guidance on Compose accessibility that tackles all of these topics in more detail:

goo.gle/compose-acce...

We launched the #Androidify sample app on GitHub yesterday too to learn more about how it works behind the scenes. android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/05/andr...

a more practical, smaller proposal is: have you tried setting the testTag first, and then clearing? This should keep the test tag and clear the rest of the semantics

modifier = Modifier
.testTag("testtag")
.clearAndSetSemantics { }

I see! a bigger question: what is your backend testing setup like, for this and everything else? if you have dynamic a11y labels in diff locales, I'd then expect you'd want to test these individually? :) meaning you'd have a way of providing test data, like a11y labels, that you can access in tests

If you already have semantic info in a composable, you can most likely just use that for assertion in a test as well. Test tags are often used unnecessarily just cause it's convenient :), chances are you can avoid it for a lot of cases

Test tags are meant to be used for testing only, whereas semantics can be used for both accessibility AND testing, whenever possible. Can you explain why and how you'd ever use a test tag for accessibility purposes?