Opening TestFlight testing access for contributors or the general public

[Kief5555]

Is there an existing issue that is already proposing this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Application

Outline Client

What are you trying to do? What is your use case?

Currently, there’s no easy way for contributors or interested users to test new builds of the Outline client on iOS or macOS before they’re officially released. I’d, and I'm sure others, would like to be able to help test new updates, provide feedback, and identify bugs early through TestFlight.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it.

Contributors and power users who want to test pre-release builds need to build the app manually from source. This process can be complex, time-consuming, and may require developer tools that not all testers are comfortable using or have access to (eg. $99/yr Apple Account for VPNExtension and other resources signing).

Describe the solution you'd like.

Please consider opening invitations to TestFlight

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Building the app from source (Works, but super time consuming and problematic for folks that don't have a paid dev account)
• Waiting for App Store Production Releases (limits feedback until after release)

Thank you!

[jyyi1]

Hi @Kief5555 ,

Thanks for the great suggestion and for your willingness to help us test new builds of Outline.

We do have an internal TestFlight channel that we use for QA testing, with new builds being released approximately every 2~4 weeks. However, these builds can be unstable and may have issues, as they are part of our active development cycle.

We are happy to open up our TestFlight to more users, but we've been hesitant as we are not sure about the community's tolerance for this level of instability.

With that said, your suggestion to provide public access to more stable, QA-passed builds is an excellent point. This could be a good compromise, allowing community members to test upcoming features without being exposed to our most volatile builds. We will consider this and discuss how we can best implement such a process.

[Kief5555]

Hi @Kief5555 ,

Thanks for the great suggestion and for your willingness to help us test new builds of Outline.

We do have an internal TestFlight channel that we use for QA testing, with new builds being released approximately every 2~4 weeks. However, these builds can be unstable and may have issues, as they are part of our active development cycle.

We are happy to open up our TestFlight to more users, but we've been hesitant as we are not sure about the community's tolerance for this level of instability.

With that said, your suggestion to provide public access to more stable, QA-passed builds is an excellent point. This could be a good compromise, allowing community members to test upcoming features without being exposed to our most volatile builds. We will consider this and discuss how we can best implement such a process.

Sounds good.

Especially with the less stable builds, you can still release them just to internal testers, rather than invited "external" testers (I believe thats what Apple Calls it or its just a different "group" of testers) or still release it to the public TestFlight.

TestFlight is meant to test unstable, alpha/beta versions of an app so it would be on the user so-to-say for downloading and testing less ideal builds. If a user's goal is for stability, they shouldn't be downloading the TestFlight builds. That being said, the team could consider warning users on first launch that they are running a non-production build.

Either way, I appreciate you taking this into consideration and I hope it will be open to the public soon 😄