In house testing with side-loaded apps is great for isolating and fixing bugs, but it’s not enough. To be certain that your customers are getting the experience you want them to have, you have to test your app against a production environment. 

We’re excited to announce a new tool for mobile developers called Live App Testing. Live App Testing allows you to quickly distribute your apps in the Amazon Appstore to a pre-defined set of testers before you go live.  The testers will be able to sample the full suite of Amazon services - including in-app purchasing - against our production environment, so you can ensure your app is working as expected.  This allows you to gather feedback, improve quality, increase stability and optimize the experience before you push your app live for all customers to download.

What is it?

Live App Testing allows you to create a version of your app that is only distributed to select testers of your choice. You invite testers by adding their email address to Live App Testing.  Once testers are invited to test, they will receive an email with instructions to download the test app and begin testing against Amazon’s production environment.  Only invited testers will be allowed to download and test your app.  As a part of Live App Testing, you can test your apps on any Android or Amazon Fire device.

What does Live App Testing Include?

• Test your app against Amazon production environment before distributing to everyone:  You no longer need to wait until after your app is launched to get real world testing.  You can now distribute your app to a set of testers you define, which gives your more control over the test.  And, you can quickly test against a production environment (yours and Amazon’s), ensuring a higher quality app when you release to the general public.
• Tester Management: Easily define the list of testers you want to be able to test your app.  You don’t need to keep track of who you have invited to test your app.  Amazon takes care of the complexity of ensuring that only the set of testers you defined are the ones that are testing the app.
• Test on all Android and Amazon devices, including Fire TV and Fire phone:  You can choose to test your app against all Android and Amazon devices, including the Fire TV and Fire phone. 

Step by Step guide

1.  Go to the Amazon Developer Portal and select “My apps”. You’ll need to sign into your developer account. If you don’t have one yet, the sign up is easy and it’s completely free.

2.  Select an existing app or click on “Add a New App”.  If “Add a New App” is selected, go to step 3, otherwise, skip to step 4.

3.  After selecting “Add a New App”, select “Android”.  Click next and fill out the New App Submission information.

4.  Select Live App Testing to begin to setup a test for this app.  Once on this page, click on “start your first test run” to begin the process of setting up your first test.

5.  Fill out all of the required tabs

In this step, you will be adding the metadata and the APK that you want to test.

6.  Once you have filled out each tab, you can either submit your app (without assigning testers) or go to the dashboard and add testers.

If you are not ready to add testers at this time, you can select “Submit” and submit the app for publishing.  This process can take up to a few hours.

If you would like to add testers before submitting your app, select “Go to Dashboard” to add testers following the steps below.

7.  On the dashboard, click on “Add Testers” to add testers to the test.

8.  On the testers page, click on “Add Testers”.

9.  Either upload a list of tester email addresses or add the testers individually.  I recommend you add yourself as a tester so you can get the invitation email which will signify that the binary is available to download and test.

10.  Once you add the testers, select save.

11.  You will notice on the dashboard that you have 1 tester assigned to the test.  At this time, select actions (the sprocket icon) and select submit.

You’re all done.  Testers will receive an email to join your test once the app is live.

Managing Your Test

Once your app is running, you can either end your test, or promote your test to an upcoming version.  By promoting your app to an upcoming version, you can make some finishing touches such as upload final screenshots or metadata before going live.

Tests that you have ended will appear on the Live App Testing Dashboard under the “Past Tests” section.

You can also easily see the crashes that have occurred during this test in the Live App testing Dashboard.

Try Live App Testing Yourself

The new Amazon Live App Testing helps you manage testing to help you publish higher quality apps in the Appstore with fewer errors. Creating a new test is easy through the Amazon Developer Portal, at no cost to you. Click here to get started.

Click here to get a free Amazon developer account.