How to test replication without doing a failover

List

Very newbie here on PostgreSQL coming from an Oracle DBA background mostly

How do I test and confirm whether replication is working or not besides
depending on just running the SQL below?

select pg_is_in_recovery() ;

select * from pg_stat_replication ;

Is it possible to force/initiate a log transaction and see if that gets
replicated or not? I mean for example on Oracle we can do a switch logfile
and check if that log gets shipped across and applied on the standby, is
there something similar in PostgreSQL?
Maybe someone can refer me to an example if there is one somewhere?

Regards,
Ed