Internal, Close and Open Testing on Google Play

To publish better quality app and seamless experience to the user.

As we all know, app testing is the most important thing before we release our app into production. Testing helps collect feedback that helps improve your application through its development.

There are three different test tracks (Internal, Open and Close) that you can create in Play store. Every track has its own purpose, functionality and limits. We’re going to go through it in great detail, step by step and also discuss how to promote the build from one track to higher and pause track after testing.

Internal Testing:

Internal testing is useful to quickly distribute builds to a small set of testers.

This test is used to perform the initial QA checks. You can distribute your application among 100 invited testers. The feedback from your test users won’t affect your app’s public rating it is only visible to Developer Account.

After publishing internal test for the first time, it may take a few days for your test link to be available to testers. After then any new release available in few hours. This build is directly available for testing without review.

If you test a paid application, testers can install the application without paying.

Create tester list and share the invitation:

1. Open Play console and open the Internal testing page.
2. Select the Testers tab.
3. Click on Create email list which open popup for adding multiple emails.
4. Add email addresses separated by commas or click Upload CSV file. If you use a .CSV file, put each email address on its own line.
5. Select Save changes.
6. As show in above screen shoot, Copy link from Tester can join you test on the web.
7. Now share this link to all testers.
8. Tester have to open this link in Browser where it is login with shared email.

9. When you open the invitation link in the Browser, you can find this type of invitation information and click on Accept Invitation.

10. Now developer can create release for internal track in play console and upload app bundle that will be available on playstore for download for tester.

Turn on Internal app sharing:

If your app have any build in production then this steps are optional but if your app has not live any version yet then this step must be follow by testers.

1. Open the Google Play Store app Google Play.

2. Tap Menu Menu > Settings.

3. In the “About” section, tap the Play Store version 7 times.

4. After the Internal app sharing setting appears, tap the switch to turn on internal app sharing. Tap Turn on.

Download app :

1. Open play store and make sure the sign-in email is your tester email address.
2. Now search the application on store.
3. You can find the application is show with internal beta label, you can download this application and start testing.
4. Make sure android device has Developer Mode is enabled.

Close Testing :

Closed tests useful for testing the application with a wider set of testers for gathering more targeted feedback. You can use individual emails or Google groups in the testers group. For add google groups the format will be: yourgroupname@googlegroups.com.

When build submit to close testing, it will first go to review and then available to test.

Tester have the ability to share rating and review through Google play console and that does not impact your public ratings and it will not be visible to the user.

If you’re testing a paid app, testers have to purchase it to test it.

Create a list of testers, share the invitation to the tester and download the app to the Android device this steps remain the same as the internal tests.

Open Testing :

Open tests are useful for collecting qualitative feedback of your app or game from a large number of testers.

Same as close testing, when you submit the build to open tests, it first goes through review and then available for testing and If you’re testing a paid app, testers have to purchase it to test it.

Open Testing app is visible to the general public on Google Play and anyone can join, but it comes with Pre-release warning. The user can test the application and provide comments, but reviews are only visible to the developer.

You can choose an unlimited or limited numbers of public testers. If you choose x limited persons, only x persons will see your application on the store and will be able to download it. You can also control the countries and regions where your application is available for testing.

If an application is available for open tests (beta), the following message is displayed in the Play store. A user can join the test and can leave at any time.

Promote Track:

Every release on any track can be “promoted” to another higher track with some subsequent steps. So, once you are finished with the internal test of a particular application version, you can easily promote the application to open testing, close testing or production.

Open Release tab and select build which you want to move to higher track, click on Promote Release and select required Testing track.

Pause Testing:

Once the test has been completed and you have received feedback from the user, you may want to disable the test. Follow these steps to deactivate the track.

1. Select testing track (Internal, close, open) on google play console.
2. Select the Release tab .
3. Click on Manage Track and then click on Pause track.

Hopefully this information is useful to understand the difference between internal, closed and open tests and you can now able to choose different test tracks base on requirement.

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