When to use Internal App Sharing on Google Play or Firebase App Distribution
Testing is a critical part of the software development cycle. There are different types of tests, such as unit testing, UI testing and even manual testing. When it comes to making app builds available to QA engineers, we can do this in many ways. Two options that have recently been made available to Android developers are Internal app Sharing on Google Play and Firebase App Distribution.
Both of these platforms serve a simple purpose, which is to get debuggable versions of your app to your QA engineers to test the work you have produced. The question however is, which one should you use if they are so similar? Let’s explore both of these options and see which one suits us best.
Internal app sharing on Google Play
Internal app sharing is a tool provided to Android developers inside the Google Play console. This allows us to upload debuggable versions of our APK’s or AAB’s to the console without signing our build. This has always been something that has been offered by third party providers like AppCenter or Fabric (Now Firebase app distribution).
So how does it work?
Firstly, you can head over to the Google Play Publish console and select your application. If you have not published your app before, you will need to create an application.
On the left menu under development tools you will find Internal app sharing.
Once selected, we will be presented with 3 tabs which are: Manage uploaders, Manage Testers and App Certificate.
My first thought was trying to upload a build and get the link that gets generated, but that just produced an error.
I then released that I needed to add myself as an uploader even though I was the owner of the Play Console account. This was weird. I added myself and tried uploading the build again. This proved to produce more errors.
I managed to figure out, that since this was a new app and has never been through the new review process yet, it would not let me upload my build to internal app testing. I then uploaded a build that was signed to the Alpha track.
Once that was done, I managed to upload a successful build to internal app sharing.
Once uploaded, it then generated a link for that build to download. I could then copy this link to my mobile device. This was great.
Once I clicked on the link, I realized that I needed to be authorized as a tester for the device I was using. How to do this, is well documented on the Google Play Console Help page. I went to the Google Play app, clicked on settings and scrolled to “Play Store version”. I needed to click “Play Store version” 7 times, like you do to show developer settings. This will reveal Internal app sharing and you can then turn it on.
At this point if you go back to the link, you will be able to download the app to your phone and start testing your build. When pushing these builds, to internal app sharing, the developer does not need to change the version number for new builds which is something you would need to do with alpha or beta testing in the Play Console.
There is a third tab on the Internal app sharing page title App Certificate. This is important for any developers that need signed APK’s in order to use any third party services. Since we can upload debugable builds, the Play Console will automatically sign these builds with an internal app sharing key. This will also automatically generate a certificate under this tab.
This is great, as we can now give debugable versions of our apps to QA engineers to test and provide feedback.
Limitations
- All download links expire after 60 days, which is okay (but this might be a limitation for some).
- You will not be able to upload builds that have a different package to the released app. You might be adding prefix or suffix to your package to distinguish between builds. These will not be accepted by the Play Console.
- There can only be a maximum of 100 downloads from that link. This could be an issue depending on if you have a few automation tools running tests on your build, or if you have multiple feature teams with their own testers, testing the build.
- There was no notification when a new build was available to the testers. This could’ve been a bug on my side but I did not see documentation that says a notification would be sent to testers. I just added a slack notification in our CI once I had the download link but if a notification could’ve been sent via email that could’ve been great.
Firebase app distribution
App distribution is a product that Firebase offers in order for us to do something similar to Google Play internal app sharing, which is to upload builds of our Android app to be tested.
Getting started with Firebase App distribution is really simple. If you have a Firebase project setup for your app, you can just head over to the app distribution menu item and you will be able to start uploading builds. You will be presented with 3 tabs: Releases, Invite links and Testers & Groups.
In the Release tab, there is a drag and drop section for us to upload our builds. This makes things really easy.
Once you upload your build, you can add testers to that specific build or you can add a group of testers you have previously set up which makes this really nice for distribution. You will be allowed to also add release notes to your builds which can give QA engineers information on what they need to test.
Once you have created the release, you will notify each of the testers assigned to that release. There is also a nice interface to let you know who has been invited and who has downloaded the build for testing. This can be a good indication of how many people have tested this build.
In the Invite links tab, you will be able to generate links for people outside of your tester group and maybe a specific domain. This could be a tool to help push builds out to some internal staff such as product owners that would like to test a specific build and not necessarily be emailed about every new build.
Since you have a Firebase project, App distribution works really well with Crashlytics, so this could be something to look into if you don’t have a crash monitoring tool.
Something to note is that when installing your app, you might be alerted with the fact that you installed an app from an unknown source, you will just need to allow this in your settings.
Limitations
- Firebase App Distributions limits you on the amount of testers you are allowed to have for a specific build, which is 200. Testers can however download the build as many times as they want as long as they are one of the testers on the list for that build.
- You can not have more than 500 testers per project. This is a large number, but for some organizations this could be an issue if you maybe use one project for different variants of your app or have more than one app linked to your project.
Automation
Both of these products are great for uploading builds for testers and getting them to download it but we want to make sure that we can automate this process within our CI/CD pipeline. Some CI/CD providers might already have some plugins that make this easy for developers. Bitrise for one has a step you can add to a workflow for Firebase App Distribution.
My recommendation would be to use Fastlane, if you are going to use either of these methods as Fastlane supports both internal app sharing and Firebase app distribution which is awesome. If you have not used Fastlane before, it is a great tool to help automate processes in the building and deployment of your app.
If you are already using the Gradle Play Publisher plugin, this plugin has uploading to internal app sharing available too.
Final thoughts
These are both awesome products that offer you a really great feature that you should have in your development cycle. You would need to make a decision which one works better for you. I would say that if you already have a Firebase project for your app and you are using other Firebase products, then app distribution could work well. If you have an iOS version of this app, Firebase app distribution could also work well.
What’s great about internal app sharing, is that it comes from the Google play console and is trusted by your Play Store app. This could seem safer than installing a version of an app presented to a tester that is from an “unknown source”.
Some of the key factors to wanting to use internal app sharing is that it allows you to test features like dynamic modules, dynamic asset delivery and in-app updates. These features that need Google Play integration, will be available when using internal app sharing.
There are also other alternatives out there like AppCenter and TestFairy which are good products that you could possibly try out to achieve the same thing.
For more information on both Internal App sharing and Firebase App-distribution, check out the documentation.
Thanks to those that reviewed this post.
If you have any thoughts about app distribution, leave a comment below or if you have opinions on these products, let’s start a conversation.
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