Can vstest.console.exe run an appx without a security certificate

A UWP package must be signed, so it should not be able to made to run without a .cer. Please see the Best Practices for Signing Certificates and Create a certificate for package signing topics to create a signing certificate firstly.

Actually there is a way to run a UWP unit test using vstest.console.exe without having to install any certificate: Pass to vstest.console.exe the .appxrecipe file instead of the .appx file.

It will deploy the UWP unit test app from its current build location and be able to start the tests.