publishing an alpha vsersion of my android app

Question

I am confused about android application testing. when I publish an alpha version, do all the people who are registered as testers in the whole world have access to the app or do I get a link and send it to whoever I know to test it. if its the latter how can I get testers for my app.

Answer 1

Later what you said only will work out in alpha testing, you should have separate testing team in your organization so that you can share the URL with them to test the app or you can add them using their google play account so that the app will be visible only to them in their Google play app, not to all of the real time users.

Until you upload the apk in production mode, your app will not be visible to other users.

Answer 2

Alpha and beta tests are working in the same way. You upload your app to google play, fill out all the fields in your store entry and then you need to create a Google Plus community. Copy and paste the URL of the community into the Google Play developer console as testers, you will see another URL2, this URL2 has to be opened by your testers. Now you need to find people joining your group in Google Plus and tell them the procedure for tester:

1. Open URL2

2. and confirm to participate the testing

3. The installation has to be started with a browser, the URL of your app is the same as for apps in production.

4. If you ship a new alpha version, your testers get the new version automaticly if they have configured that.

5. From here on everything is as it is for apps in production.

I agree it is a kind of an odd procedure and I hope I explained it clear. However, what you can always do, just upload your apk to a web server and provide your testers with the link for the app on your webserver, your testers only need to accept installations from third party. You can't get ratings for such an app.