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Ship for Testing

Apple uses TestFlight to allow developers to test their games on iOS devices and invite others to test them too on their phones.

This is a great way to get feedback and check that everything works before releasing the app to everyone on the main store.

Prerequisites​

Before you can ship your game for testing, you need to have the following:

Steps​

Ship your game to TestFlight​

Shipthis combines all the steps to export, build, and upload your game to TestFlight into one command:

This command will upload your game code to the ShipThis server and then perform the following:

  1. Export the game for the iOS platform
  2. Configure Xcode with your certificate and keys
  3. Build the game for iOS
  4. Upload the generated IPA file to TestFlight
  5. Automatically increment the "build number" used for the next build

The command may take some time to run, it will show the status of the build job as it runs.

Once successful, you should expect to see output similar to below:

david@sal9000:~/game$ shipthis game ship
JOB DETAILS                     ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
ID          61340b36            │                                                                  │
Name        Shotgun Steve XII   │ BUILD DETAILS                                                    │
Status      COMPLETED           │   ID          ec0cf844                                           │
Version     0.0.1 (2)           │   Platform    iOS                                                │
Git Info    ea32f15e (main)     │   Type                                                           │
Platform    iOS                 │   CMD         $ shipthis game build download ec0cf844 output.ipa │
Started At  19/11/2024, 16:54   │                                                                  │
Runtime     3 min & 6 sec       └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
JOB LOGS
16:57:24.576 PUBLISH   UPLOAD SUCCEEDED
16:57:24.577 PUBLISH   Delivery UUID: 75ca5604-2af7-42ce-8d99-a5cda1c45131
16:57:24.578 PUBLISH   Transferred 22938342 bytes in 0.402 seconds (57.0MB/s)
16:57:24.580 PUBLISH   ================
16:57:24.583 PUBLISH   No errors uploading '/var/folders/bm/f...b4/output.ipa'
16:57:24.588 PUBLISH   Exit code 0 and signal null and error undefined
16:57:24.670 PUBLISH
16:57:24.671 PUBLISH
16:57:26.095 PUBLISH   Uploading the IPA to the ShipThis server
16:57:26.585 PUBLISH   ✅ shipped

If you encounter any problems, please see our troubleshooting guide.

Add Testers​

By default the game will have no testers so you won't see it in your TestFlight immediately even as the developer.

You will need to login to App Store Connect and add testers to your game.