Hi and welcome back.
Today we're going to talk about Test Flight.
So what is test flight?
Test Flight is Apple's official platform
that allows you to test and distribute iOS apps before they're released.
It's like having your own testing environment where you can try out your
app, uncover any bugs, and gather valuable feedback from your testers.
So why do you need test flight?
Well, testing your app solely on your own device is limited.
Testlight opens up a world of possibilities.
Firstly, it enables you to test your app on variety of devices with different
configurations, screen sizes, and software versions.
This ensures your app works seamlessly across different iPhones.
Secondly, Test Flight provides
a controlled and secure environment for testing.
You can invite specific individuals to become Testers,
ensuring your app remains confidential and protected until it's ready for release.
Let's talk about the problems Test Flight solves.
Firstly, it simplifies the distribution process.
Instead of manually installing your app on each tester's device,
test Flight streamlines this by providing an easy to use app distribution mechanism.
Testers can install the Test Flight app
and receive invitations to download and test your application directly.
They can provide valuable feedback
through the Test Flight app, allowing you to gather information
on crashes, UI, Glitches, or functionality problems they encounter.
This feedback helps you improve your
app's quality before releasing it to a wider audience.
In the next videos, we're going to explore
how to upload our application to Test Flight.
To begin, you'll need an Apple Developer account.
So make sure that until you dive
into the next video, you have the Apple Developer account.
Once our app is uploaded to Test Flight,
we can start testing it on our own devices and invite others to join in as well.
But until we do that, for the time being, I just want to quickly show you how your
Test Flight section could look like in your Apple Developer account.
So right now you're looking at my Apple Developer account,
and it is not the same account that we created together.
It is my old account where I keep my application draft that I have created.
So I'm just going to go to my apps here
and you're going to see a bunch of application drafts I have created.
So let's say that we go to.
The first application that I have ever created.
It was supposed to be an art application.
And then here you're going to see different sections.
So this App Store section will allow you to choose a build that you have uploaded
of your application and submitted for review to the Apple Store team.
So that you could actually publish it.
And what we want to discuss is
particularly this tab, test Flight tab.
So if we go here,
we're going to see that I have uploaded some builds of my application.
They have expired because every build that
is not submitted to be reviewed by Apple Store team expires every three months.
And I have uploaded this a couple of years ago, so they have already expired.
But when I created these build, I wanted to share it with some people,
mainly my friends, so that they could take a look and let me know how intuitive
my app is, whether they experienced any crashes.
And I could have found the feedback here if they had reported any crashes.
Through their Test Flight application.
And I could have received this feedback right here.
I could have seen what issues my friends experienced when testing my application.
If you want to create an internal testing
group, you can do so here and create some kind of name, for example, Friends.
And then you can just press on this button
and fill out some fields such as their email and name,
and you can send out an invite and they're going to receive a special code that will
allow the to access your application on their phones directly.
So right now, I have two testers set up.
I'm just not going to go to this tab because you're going to see their emails.
And the idea is that using these testers, you get as much feedback as possible.
Plus, once you upload your builds,
they're automatically going to be available on Test Flight.
So if you wanted to test it.
Yourself, you could do so as well.
You would see all your builds right here.
Any binary files that you have uploaded
which represent your builds would be presented here.
And then how you actually release it is
you go to the App Store tab and you would add a build from here.
You could choose a build,
press on Done, and then fill out some of the information that is required
by Apple, save it, and then add for review and submit it to the App Store review.
Okay, so this is what Test Flight.
Is, and Test Flight application itself is
available to be downloaded on the App Store.
So your friends could just go to App Store on their phone, download it so that they
can access your application using the code that you provide to them.
So that's all for this video.
I just quickly wanted to explain what
Test Flight is because we are going to be using Test Flight in the upcoming videos
when trying to deploy our application to Apple Store.
Now, if you still don't have
Apple Developer ID, I just want to emphasize this again.
You're not going to be able to deploy your application to Test Flight.
However, if you still want to practice how to upload your builds,
then you can just come back to the Google Play Store video maybe,
because the subscription there is definitely cheaper.
So once you have your application ready and you actually want to deploy it,
you can code back to the set of these videos of deployment section and go
through it again and make sure that you are able to upload your application
on test flight as long as you want to make it available to iOS users as well.
Thanks so much for watching.
See you in the next video.