Seven months after Apple acquired Burstly, creator of popular app beta-testing service TestFlight, the Cupertino company has officially unveiled the first official native version of the TestFlight app, available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and opened it to a small number of in-house testers.
In the wake of the acquisition back in February, it was revealed that TestFlight would drop its support for Android apps, but in the iOS realm the move meant that developers would soon be better equipped for testing and debugging apps before pushing them live in the App Store, letting them work with up to 1,000 beta testers.
Following what seemed like a limited soft rollout earlier this week in the US, TestFlight for iOS is now officially available to download globally – but it requires iOS 8 for it to work, which is scheduled to launch publicly on September 17. So this is basically designed to expedite last-minute bug-crushing for the apps that will run on its new mobile OS.
In a separate email sent out by Apple to iTunes Connect members, it says developers can now distribute their prerelease apps in-house, to 25 internal users. Beta testing for external parties (e.g. consumers) is “coming soon.”
To switch it on, developers must enable Internal Testing in Users and Roles through iTunes Connect, and you must create an account for each tester. Each participant will receive an email invite, and once they accept, can install and update builds, and generally provide feedback through the TestFlight app.
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