iPhone App:Test the newer version of app first and after make it available for other users for download

Question

I have an iPhone App which is available on App Store.

Now I have made some changes in my existing App which can be tested only when an App is available on App Store

Answer 1

The short answer is: NO - there is no way to make an app available on the app store that only you can download and test.

If you can specify exactly what it is that you are trying to test that only works when the app is live, we may be able to suggest a different approach.

EDIT: if you just want to test the upgrade process, you can just install the new version on top of the old one - there's no need to delete the one already on the phone. For example if you download the version from the app store, run it, and then build and install a version from Xcode, it will install on top of the app store version, and keep all the settings and documents from that version, just like if a user was upgrading.

Also read up on "wireless distribution" for adhoc apps. Using wireless distribution, you can download and install the app from a link on your phone, just as if you were doing it from the app store, except the link will only work for UDIDs that were included in the adhoc profile.

Answer 2

Two choices:

OTA AdHoc Distribution

Set up over-the-air Ad Hoc distribution. These guys can help: https://testflightapp.com/

A user can install an adhoc build over an appstore build without deleting data, and vice-versa.

Side-by-side Builds

Ok, so your question is about side-by-side installation: you want a user to have the real app and a test version on the phone at the same time. To do that you just need to create version of the app with a different bundle Id. So if your app is com.myco.MyApp, create a copy of it as com.myco.testing.MyApp. Then use Ad Hoc distribution (or whatever) to get it to testers.

I've got a build script that updates the bundle version with the build number. I'm actually just about to update the script so that it will modify the bundle Id so I can have side-by-side testing. This is what I do for the bundle version on my build server:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion '${PROJECTBUNDLEVERSION}'" $PROJECT/Info.plist

Presumably can do something similar for the CFBundleID:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleIdentifier '${PROJECTTESTBUNDLEID}'" $PROJECT/Info.plist