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Install links and QR codes

How people who are not on your team get the app.

An install link is a public page showing an app and the builds a visitor can install. It needs no account, which is the whole point: your tester is a person with a phone, not a user of your build system.

A link tracks a channel, not a file. Point one at Prelive and it always offers the newest Prelive build — so the link you sent last month still hands out today's build. You can pin a link to a single build when you need someone to test exactly that one.

Controls

  • Password — the visitor must enter it before seeing anything
  • Expiry — the link stops working after a date you choose
  • Install cap — it stops after a set number of installs
  • Revoke — kills it immediately, without affecting other links

QR codes

Every link has one. In a room with someone, showing the QR code is faster than sending anything.

Install counts

An install is counted when a device actually begins downloading the artifact. Requests that are not a person installing something — link previews, browser prefetches, a paused download resuming — are excluded, and repeat starts from the same device within ten minutes count once.

This matters more than it sounds. Counting naively inflates the number several times over, and a number nobody trusts is worse than no number.