I'm just getting started with writing Android apps.
I have something I want to make available to a few interested testers, but I'm a long way from having an app. ready for the general public.
How do I make it available for testers without putting it on Play?
If you have a developer account, you can upload the app for testing, visible only a limited audience. This can be done without publishing the app on Play Appstore for the general public.
Google recommends this for Beta-testing and staged rollouts.
You can have a look to this website: http://thebetafamily.com/
On this website, both testers and creators car register. Testers will apply for tests (tests can be paid or not) and app creators can register to present their app and explain what specific parts of the website should be tested: http://thebetafamily.com/features.
I got really good feedbacks from testers there, both functional and technical, even though I did not offer any paid tests for now.
There is also TestFlight: https://testflightapp.com/ but the difference is that you have to gather your own testers team (I did not have a real network of testers to provide ...).
Related
I have followed the instructions here
https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_testing#testing-purchases
in order to allow beta testers to make test in-app purchase (without actually paying).
Yet, there is a big flaw: there is no way to mention that the testing should only apply to the beta-tested app, is there?
Thanks.
These accounts are usually not for public beta testers. They are for helping internal testing while you are developing the payment part of your app.
This feature is for testing while you are doing app development, and not designed to let all your beta testers get free stuff.
I'm a developer and i was thrilled when I was watching Google IO 2013 and learned about the new Beta testing feature. So I created a Google+ community and a google group and placed the testers in there (me included).
All we get (the developers and testers) when we visit the https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.package.stuff
is this:
Is there any trick I am missing? I would really like to use this feature.
I know there are alternatives like https://testflightapp.com/ but I'd rather keep my app under this environment where I can "promote" the Beta apk to the Production phase and so on.
I had this same issue. The reason the link is not working is because the app must be published before the link will be active. I repeat the app must be published, this does not mean there must be an APK in production. On the top right of your applications developer console page there is a drop down menu that allows you to publish the app. That link will become active immediately and your app will be available in a few hours to your testers on the Play Store.
First of all you need to create or have a Google+ community.
The process is:
Create a new Google + community. It's required to have testers through Developer Console.
Register this community in Google Play Developer Console
Invite your beta testers to this community.
Wait 8-24 hours before sharing the link
Share the link with your testers
Verify that your app is published for Beta Testing
If everything is right, the link should show something like:
I'm having the same problem, the link simply doesn't work, 36 hours after publishing. Might as well not even provide the alpha/beta features if they cripple the developer's ability to move fast...
Anyway, I'm sharing some information provided to me by Google Support, hoping it'll be helpful:
Ensure that you have added a valid Google Group email or Google+ Community URL to the Developer Console and that you are included in the group/community. Once the group/community has been added, the name of the group will display in the “Manage list of testers” link in the testing tab. (Please note when adding a Google Group you need to enter the email address and not the URL).
If you wish to use a Google Group in a Google Apps domain, the Developer Console and Private Channel must be enabled for your domain in the Google Apps Control Panel. More Private Channel info: http://goo.gl/DLGNe
An app must be published for several hours before the opt-in link will become available to testers.
Currently, testers must have only one account on their device. Devices with more than one account will receive the production version of your app. (Please note this requirement is temporary. Stay tuned for updates).
2015 and the alpha/beta testing is, at best, 50% working. About 50% (23 of our 60+) beta tester never gain access to the app via the provided link. All the others have no trouble at all installing the beta app and receiving updates. No rhyme or reason. Single account on their device, some with gmail accounts, some with private email. It's a mixed bag of who gets access and who doesn't. In all cases, once they accept the invitation to join the group they have full access to the group. But they get a 404 when trying access the app. Not worth the trouble. Our fix is to give the testers access to to our private server and pass out the beta versions that way. Updates aren't automagic, but the testers can get the app hassle free
I had the same problem and alpha testers had to get into my Google Plus Community for alpha testers.
I had the same problem (404 error on tester's link), but the cause was different from the one shown in buckson18's answer: in my case the app was published, but the user didn't join the testers Google Group, although he received the invite.
After the user joined the group, the page showed correctly.
Hope this can help someone...
I was also facing this issue. The problem was that Google group was not added. Another important thing to take care is that the account being used for developer console must be member of google group being added. I couldn't find this anywhere in the documentation.
I have been using Beta testings for a couple of years and its very unreliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Now they have Open Beta Testing. I tried it today for the first time, and though I followed all the instructions, but it still doesn't show the app in the app store, unless I sign in, which makes it regular old style beta testing. Its much easier and hassle free to use HockeyApp to distribute app for testing.
After wasting hours with Goolge's Alpha and Beta versions, I always end up putting my app into production so that I could keep my testers. Its already hard to convince large number of people to do the testing, and then keep asking them to go through half working or not working procedures to download the app.
I solved it by go to https://play.google.com/apps/testing/[app package] on the device and then click that link and open it with google play
One thing that seems to have worked for us is to use the "opt-in URL" the Play Store developer console provides under "App releases" which should look like:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.yourappname.android
This DIFFERS than the URL you see if you're already approved as a tester and visit the app's page on the Play Store in a browser. Ours looks like this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yourappname.android
Net net, use the 1st and not the 2nd. Good luck!
It should be noted also that the link is case sensitive so if you've got https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.someAppName - if you put https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.someappname it'll tell you it's not available!
I'd like to publish an app in the market to make it easy to install, but we're in early beta, so I'd like to prevent random people from stumbling on it and likely giving it a bad review because they can't log in (or whatever). Ideally, it would hide the app, unless you had a direct link to it.
Any way to do this? It looks like you can prevent outside advertising, but I would assume the app would always show up in market searches. You could set the maturity level super high, and try to lock down geography, but this all sounds like a bad idea.
You can go someway to 'hiding' the app, and dissassociate the beta from the full release:
use a secret name, so the app won’t be ‘stumbled upon’
use a separate market account
don’t fill in the description
give the app an expiry date
give the beta a different package name from the real app - this will ensure low reviews don’t get carried over to post beta versions
Have a look at HockeyApp. They provide a hosting service which allows you to make your builds easily accessible to invite-only testers, upload new versions automatically from your build scripts, and with a few small changes to your app you can get it to auto-update on users' devices.
On top of that you get nice error reporting.
I use it for distributing my beta builds, separately from the production-ready release builds which go on Google Play.
Just an update - the answer for most people will now be Google Play's alpha/beta testing & staged rollouts.
I've read quite a lot about in-app billing and testing but I still didn't find the answer to few questions:
How can I test real purchases on draft (unpublished) version of the app? The products/items need to be published => app need to be published. Is there a way to publish items without publishing the app?
The whole testing process is quite unfriendly to developers, shame on Google :(
I successfully tested my application using test static responses, now I need to test it on real items without publishing the application. The only way I can think of now is to publish the app for e.g. Kenya, publish the items, test and then un-publish the app.
Any ideas will be very appreciated. Thanks.
So I think I figured it out. All I needed to do was publish the app and then unpublish. After this I was be able to publish items and test real end-to-end purchases on these items. Very intuitive and developer-friendly :)
No that'll be like selling stuff (your items) that you don't have the license to sell. (For e.g you need a pharmacy to sell drugs.)
I'm sure the people who wrote this article must have considered your use case. From the article:
You do not need to publish your application to do end-to-end testing. You only need to upload your application as a draft application to perform end-to-end testing.
Also I read this here:
An item's publishing state can be Published or Unpublished . To be visible to a user during checkout, an item's publishing state must be set to Published and the item's application must be published on Android Market.
.
Note: This is not true for test accounts. An item is visible to a test account if the application is not published and the item is published. See Testing In-app Billing for more information.
The products become published as soon as you publish the app.
And your app doesn't have to be published to do the real testing, just upload as "draft".
The app must be signed.
The whole testing process is quite unfriendly to developers, shame on Google :(
Luckily there are libraries that can help with testing, for example android test billing. This library is the In-App billing implementation for the emulator, which was tested in the application Horer horaires de RER.
So, I have a few little android apps now, and am thinking about releasing the in the Amazon App Store. However I have one fundamental question I don't see answered anywhere.
How is Licensing handled if you release the app on the amazon store? I am currently using the Google LVL licensing in my paid apps to ensure the user is licensed to run them. I assume that an app sold on Amazon, isn't going to have any connection to tell Google, hey, this app was purchased, they are licensed, so send them an OK TO RUN status when they launch it. Or am I mistaken?
Does Amazon have its own LVL type code? Or do you just have to forget licensing all together if you want to sell on Amazon?
Simply remove all LVL code from your app (making it unprotected), then select the copy protection radio button when submitting your app to Amazon. They'll add the licensing code to your app before resigning it and releasing it on the Amazon Appstore.
No store-provided licensing code works in other app stores. Many have rolled their own, with varying degrees of simplicity.
I have an app in Android Market. What should I do to ensure the app
works in the Amazon Appstore?
You should make sure that your app does
not include any copy protection functionality (you have the option to
apply Amazon’s DRM technology – see our FAQ on DRM). You should also
take a moment to understand the different signing options available to
you (developer signed or Amazon signed) and choose the option that
works best for your users.
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