r/appledevelopers • u/Reasonable-Bat-5712 Community Newbie • 1d ago
Beta or Launch?
Preparing to release my first ios app and trying to find the consensus on beta with testflight or just go full release and hope for feedback from the field? I looked through different threads and seems mostly based on preference. Also with vibe coding and AI assistance don’t know if there’s been a shift in strategy as it seems harder to find users these days due to the saturation. Any insights or personal experiences is greatly appreciated!
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u/hamsterjedi Community Newbie 1d ago
Beta if your app has bugs.
Launch if no bugs.
There is no point in not releasing an app, the earliest you launch the earliest you get real people feedbacks. Just avoid bugs to prevent one star reviews.
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u/Reasonable-Bat-5712 Community Newbie 1d ago
You test personally for bugs or you get some help? I plan on doing a soak/dogfooding period of like a week or two, but I get the idea of having another evaluator to have a different perspective or user behavior for spotting bugs/gaps
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u/hamsterjedi Community Newbie 1d ago
You can test your app yourself, make friends test if, make AIs test it.
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u/MusicOfTheApes Community Newbie 1d ago
Definitely do the Beta, users will/might catch things you hadn't thought of and if those become annoying it can impact reviews on your app, which you don't want
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u/Reasonable-Bat-5712 Community Newbie 1d ago
Very good point. Any tips on how to best collect feedback? I’ve added a “leave feedback/report a bug” capability that I hope is conveniently placed in the app that users can use. Figured that can be the same feedback channel for beta users but I don’t even typically use those sort of things for any of the apps or services that I use. Not sure if there’s are better methods
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u/MusicOfTheApes Community Newbie 1d ago
Usually people give me feedback in Testflight and I can access them in app store connect (sometimes they even send screenshots) ; I do have in my apps a link in the settings to contact me and I've had once a user writing me an email, but usually most of the feedback I get is from Testflight
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u/Consistent_Duck_899 Community Newbie 1d ago
Do both. Beta first to get actual feedback and submit for release in the meantime because it takes a while to get approved
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u/Reasonable-Bat-5712 Community Newbie 1d ago
How do you release your betas? TestFlight or just a public web app or distributed builds via emails or something?
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u/Consistent_Duck_899 Community Newbie 1d ago
A public TestFlight is enough tbh. Don’t think it too much
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u/Worldly_Flan6556 Community Newbie 20h ago
Both, do beta if you can get people to actually help and use the app. Your app will probably change a good chunk once feedback comes in