How can a Beta-tester of android applications to have installed both production and beta app in the same device?

Question

I need that my beta testers have the beta app to let them test it but at the same time they must to have the production app to work in production. The problem is that seems if t

Answer 1

The short answer is No, it can't be done.

Update: it turns out the suggestion below is not true...

But you could sort of achieve this by defining multiple user accounts on the device. Create a second user account on the device that uses a different, not-in-the-beta Google account. User accounts have their own distinct set of installed apps, so you could then switch between the two user accounts to use the beta or prod app.

Answer 2

After some developments after releasing the app to production a bug was reported that I couldn't replicate in the latest version. So I needed to check the production version. As they both have the same name I knew I couldn't have both, so I tried to replace the beta version by the production one.

This is what I found out about how to do it.

Step 1. In my phone I went to the app page but the store insisted to install the beta version.

Step 2. In my phone change the account to one whithout beta test access. The play store detected the other account and installed the beta version.

Step 3. Finnaly I went to the store in my desktop and logged in whith the normal account I have on my device! This worked! The production version was in my phone and I could test it!

So my solution to you is this:

You can't have the two versions simultaneously in the same phone except if they have different names. But you can replace the beta by the production one if you have two accounts on the phone and

A) Loggout from the account with access to the beta version and then install the production one,

or

B) Install from a desktop.

Answer 3

At the moment this is not possible by design. Beta testers are ideally users who get a slightly earlier version of your app, and use it day to day so you discover issues. The thinking behind this decision was that if you allowed both, then if issues were discovered beta users wouldn't report them, they would just switch to the prod app. Also, as an app developer the beta version should be "production ready" according to your internal QA.

This has value for other reasons. Beta users can't leave public reviews - instead they send private feedback. If you allowed both, then you wouldn't be able to have this feature.

A few well known apps (like Chrome) want users to be able to have both apps. For these apps, they have a separate package name for the Beta version and maintain a separate store listing: Chrome Beta, Chrome.

If you did this it would allow both to be installed. But you would have to maintain two store listings, two sets of reviews etc.