Firebase App Distribution makes it easy to distribute pre-release versions of your app to trusted testers so you can get valuable feedback before launch. App Distribution lets you manage all of your pre-release builds for both iOS and Android in a central hub, and it gives you the flexibility to distribute these builds right from the console or using the command-line tools that are already part of your workflow - like Gradle, Firebase CLI, and fastlane!
And now, we’re excited to share an update we made to App Distribution: Support for Android App Bundles (AAB)!
Android App Bundles are Android’s new official publishing format that offers a more efficient way to build and release your app, resulting in smaller app download, which improves install success and reduces uninstalls.
App Distribution integrates with Google Play’s internal app sharing service to process the AABs you upload and serve APKs that are optimized for your testers' device configurations. When you distribute AABs, you can:
Since we launched this feature in preview mode, several customers have been using App Distribution to release AABs to test their apps. Here’s what Priceline had to say:
To get started:
You can distribute your AAB via:
Support for AAB is now available for all App Distribution customers! To get started with AAB releases visit the App Distribution console. To learn more about this feature visit the App Distribution docs.
It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since we launched App Distribution to help you with your internal testing on Android and iOS! Based on all your valuable feedback, we’re excited to share a few updates we made to App Distribution since launch.
Most customers automate their releases with App Distribution to quickly send their latest feature branch builds to their QA teams or release candidate builds to their company. This typically means distributing daily or even multiple times per day, which quickly becomes a long list of releases!
To help make this list more manageable, we added release search in the Firebase App Distribution console and tester apps. Now, it’s easy to search by version or release notes to find, manage, and test the exact release you’re looking to get feedback on.
In-app build alerts notify iOS testers when new builds are available to them, making it easier for testers to install the update right from your test app. In-app build alerts are powered through our lightweight open sourced SDK, which you can quickly integrate into your test app.
To increase download speeds for testers around the world using different devices and network connections, we made improvements to our backend systems that handle uploads and downloads. Now testers have a more reliable experience, with some testers experiencing up to 10 times faster downloads.
We recently released version 2.0 of our fastlane plugin, a major rewrite that stripped away the Firebase CLI as a dependency and makes it easier for you to set up your CI. Now, using App Distribution with fastlane is as easy as running `fastlane add_plugin firebase_app_distribution` to get up and running.
`fastlane add_plugin firebase_app_distribution`
All these improvements made to App Distribution wouldn’t be possible without the active Firebase community. With your help, we’ve been able to add more features to our fastlane plugin and it’s possible to use App Distribution in even more ways. Special shout outs to @gunes_dev, who wrote and maintains our Bitrise Step and @ziebawojtek for all of their contributions and support of the App Distribution GitHub Action.
Your feedback has helped shaped our product and our team loves hearing from developers in the #app-distributions Firebase Community Slack channel - come say hi!
There's a lot more in the works with some exciting features launching soon; you can sign up for our Alpha Program to be eligible to try them out. For developers looking to get started with App Distribution, check out our docs.
Getting your internal team to run the most recent pre-release build of your app is critical to receiving feedback on the latest features you’re getting ready to ship. However, testers receive a lot of emails on a daily basis and sometimes miss out on an email notification about a new build. This means your testers might be running old builds and sending you bug reports for an issue that’s already been fixed.
With the App Distribution iOS SDK, open sourced and available today, testers receive in-app alerts when a new build is available. Right from your test app, testers can install the update and quickly start running the latest build.
In-app alert of new release within test app
Like App Distribution, the iOS SDK was built with flexibility top-of-mind, giving you the option to customize the full user experience to make it feel like a natural extension of your app.
We’ve been working with a number of companies over the past few months, incorporating their feedback and understanding how they’re using the App Distribution iOS SDK. Twitter, who had previously used a similar feature with Fabric’s Crashlytics Beta, has integrated the SDK into their nightly builds to make sure testers can easily access the latest update. We sat down with Twitter iOS engineer, Mateusz Dzwonek, to learn more about their experience:
Why did the Twitter Release Team decide to use the Firebase App Distribution iOS SDK?
One of the main goals for our Twitter employee app is to catch bugs before they go to the public Twitter app. We always try to make it as easy as possible for people to install and update this app to the latest version, but it can get out of date pretty quickly with how often we ship new versions. In the past, we relied on sending emails to have our users update the app, which put the burden on the user to always keep up with it. But thanks to the Firebase App Distribution SDK, we were able to simplify the process by showing users if they are on the latest version and allowing them to update from the app instead of having to click on a link in an email.
How did the team use the Firebase App Distribution iOS SDK to improve your testing release process?
Before Firebase, we would check if the user was on the latest version and if not, we’d display a prompt that started an immediate update. We know that most of our users launch the app to complete a specific task, and forcing them to close the app to update it can be frustrating. So one of the most important features we were able to add to our app was a new and improved update mechanism which was possible with the Firebase App Distribution SDK. Now we’ve added an option to install the update when they close the app, and it has reduced the amount of time it takes for the latest version to reach the majority of users by nearly 20%.
Wrap Up
We hope Twitter’s success story highlights the importance of improving your tester’s experience by giving them the flexibility to install your latest pre-release versions right from your test app. We’re excited to hear about how other companies use the App Distribution iOS SDK as part of their internal testing workflow. To get started, check out our docs to set up in-app build alerts. Happy testing!
