IOs App Beta Testing: What it is and How to Run

What is IOs App Beta Testing?

iOS App Beta Testing is a pre-release testing in which a version of the app is distributed to a group of users (aka beta testers) outside the core development team. This ensures the application is well-understood and user-friendly to everyone other than the app creators. iOS beta testing aims to evaluate app performance, usability, and overall quality before making it available on the App Store.

Why Beta Testing is Essential for IOs Apps

Beta testing iOS apps is vital because it helps identify bugs, performance issues, and usability flaws before the app reaches a broader audience. This early validation enhances user experience and reduces the risk of costly post-launch fixes. According to Dimensional Research, 53% of users uninstall or remove an app with serious issues such as crashes, freezes, or errors.

Key Phases of IOs App Beta Testing

• Planning: Planning is the first and most essential iOS app beta testing phase. Based on your business resources and requirements, define your goals, testing criteria, and timeline.
• Recruitment: Identify and onboard the right beta testers, internal teams, external users, or both. Having external testers as beta testers would add more value to the product. 
• Distribution: Distribute your application’s beta version to the beta testers. 
• Feedback Collection: Gather structured input via surveys, in-app feedback, or issue trackers. This feedback is critical as it helps improve the product. 
• Bug Fixing and Iteration: Prioritize issues and correct them before release.
• Final Review: Conduct one last round of testing before release to ensure no bugs or issues.

How to Beta Test an IOs App

Step 1 – Choose the right tool for iOS beta testing 

The first step in iOS beta testing is to choose the right tool for testing. Choose the right tool considering the requirements and resources based on your project needs.

Step 2 – Set up the environment

Set the test environment based on your chosen tools. Tools can be coded or scripted, so set the environment accordingly.

Step 3 – Select the scope of testing 

One of the most important steps in testing beta apps is setting the scope of the test. The scope can include a newly released application, a new feature, a plugin, or even a minor enhancement. 

Step 4 – Distribute the app to beta testers

After defining your test requirement and setting up the environment, it is time to distribute the app to different groups of beta testers. 

Step 5 – Analyze the results 

Gather the feedback from beta testers and analyze the test results. These feedback are very important as they help in improving the product that satisfies the user’s expectations. 

Best Practices for IOs Beta Testing

• Understand your Goals: Understand and define what you want to achieve with beta testing, maybe bug identification, usability testing, performance evaluation, or gathering feature requests.
• Create a Test Plan: Provide testers with a clear test plan or specific tasks to focus on. Ask targeted questions about functionality, usability, performance, and user experience.
• Recruit Diverse Testers: Get feedback from diverse testers with varying technical skills, device types, and iOS versions to ensure compatibility.
• Offer Incentives: Endless beta testing can demotivate testers. Consider offering small incentives to motivate testers and show appreciation for their time.
• Maintain Open Communication: Provide a medium for transparent communication and actively communicate with your testers.
• Set a Timeframe: Set a timeframe for your beta testing phase to avoid infinite testing.

Tools and Platforms for IOs Beta Testing

Testsigma 

Testsigma is a cloud-based, codeless, agentic AI-powered test automation platform that allows testers to automate Android and iOS testing. Testsigma supports different types of testing like beta, sanity, regression, smoke, functional, for web, app, API, mobile, browser, desktop, Salesforce, and ERP applications. 

Features of Testsigma

• Agentic testing – Atto, an AI agent from Testsigma, performs tests autonomously with its specialized agents.
• Reduced flakiness  – Testsigma’s agents intelligently wait for elements and adapt to dynamic changes, which helps reduce flaky tests.
• Enhanced test coverage – Test up to a broader range of cases with utmost efficiency.
• Parallel testing – Run multiple types in parallel across various test environments.
• Cross-platform compatibility – Supports testing different platforms like web, mobile, API,  and desktop applications.
• Integrations – Testsigma supports integration of 30+ tools, which include Jenkins, Git, Jira and various other tools.

Testflight

Apple’s official beta testing tool for iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS apps. It’s fully integrated into the Apple Developer Program (Xcode and App Store Connect). 

Pros:

• Seamlessly integrates with Xcode and App Store Connect, simplifying the build, upload, and tester management process.
• Eliminates the process of collecting and registering tester device UDIDs for provisioning profiles.
• Provides a built-in mechanism for testers to send feedback, including screenshots and crash reports, directly from the app.
• Allows testing the exact build that will eventually go to the App Store, minimizing discrepancies.

Cons:

• The first build distributed to external testers, and the subsequent builds with significant changes must undergo a brief Apple Beta App Review, which can cause delays.
• Beta builds stored on TestFlight expire after 90 days, requiring you to upload new builds regularly.

Firebase App Distribution

Firebase App Distribution is part of Google’s Firebase platform. It provides a fast and robust way to distribute pre-release versions of your mobile apps (iOS and Android) to testers. Teams that already utilize other Firebase services often use it.

Pros:

• Ideal for teams developing iOS and Android, allowing unified distribution and management.
• Generally offers quicker distribution for internal builds than TestFlight, as it often bypasses Apple’s beta app review for internal team distribution (though public betas still require App Store Connect for iOS).
• Strong integration with CI/CD pipelines for automated build uploads and distribution.

Cons:

• For iOS apps, you will need an Apple Developer account to set up provisioning profiles correctly.
• Testers might have a slightly different onboarding experience for iOS compared to the TestFlight app.

Instabug

These integrate directly into your app, allowing testers to report bugs and send feedback directly within the application. Issues are collected with rich context, such as screenshots, screen recordings, network logs, and device details.

Pros:

• It offers many features, including bug and crash reporting, user surveys, in-app chat, and performance monitoring.
• It automatically captures device details, network logs, console logs, repro steps, and session video recordings, making bug reproduction easy.
• The in-app feedback interface can be customized to match your business requirements.
• Strong integrations with popular project management tools, communication platforms, and customer support systems.

Cons:

• It can be expensive, especially for smaller teams or apps with a high volume of users/feedback.
• Integrating the SDK adds size to your app and potentially has a minor performance impact.

JIRA

A highly powerful and customizable issue tracking and project management tool, especially popular among Agile software development teams.

Pros:

• Tracking is excellent for detailed bug reports, with custom fields, workflows, priorities, and links to code commits.
• Strong native support for Scrum and Kanban boards, sprints, and release management.
• Highly customizable workflows, fields, and reporting, suitable for complex projects and large teams.
• Extensive integrations with development tools, CI/CD platforms, and other Atlassian products.

Cons:

• It can overwhelm new users due to its extensive features and customization options.
• This might be overkill for small or simple projects.

Trello

A highly visual, Kanban-style project management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and workflows.

Pros:

• Very intuitive and easy to get started with, even for non-technical users.
• The board-and-card interface provides a clear visual representation of tasks and their progress.
• Adaptable to various workflows beyond just bug tracking.

Cons:

• It can become unwieldy for very large or complex projects with many dependencies.
• Lacks the advanced reporting and analytics capabilities of specialized project management tools like Jira.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Issues	Description	Solution
Inconsistent Feedback from Testers	Testers may provide ambiguous or conflicting feedback, making it hard to prioritize issues.	Provide clear instructions and use structured bug reporting tools like TestFairy to capture detailed and consistent feedback.
Platform and Device Compatibility Issues	iOS device fragmentation with numerous models, screen sizes, and OS versions can cause compatibility problems that are difficult to cover thoroughly in testing.	Test on various devices and OS versions, focusing on the most popular ones. Use cloud-based device farms and virtual machines to broaden coverage efficiently.
Low Tester Engagement	Testers may lose interest or fail to report issues thoroughly.	Keep testers motivated by offering incentives such as early access or rewards, and maintain regular communication with updates and feedback requests.
Time Constraints	Limited beta iOS testing periods can restrict thorough issue resolution before launch.	Prioritize critical bugs and focus on user acceptance testing (UAT) to ensure key functionality is solid within the available time.
Lack of Proper Testing Coverage	Critical scenarios like edge cases and performance under varied conditions may be overlooked.	Ensure comprehensive coverage by involving diverse testers and explicitly testing performance, edge cases, and network conditions.

Conclusion

Beta testing is a non-negotiable step in the iOS app development lifecycle. It ensures your app works well and delights users from day one. While traditional tools handle distribution and crash analytics, Testsigma elevates your testing game by enabling innovative, scalable, and collaborative test automation.

Frequently Asked Questions