TestFlight

How it works

You upload a build to App Store Connect, then invite testers. Internal testers are people who already hold a role in your App Store Connect account: up to 100 of them, each on up to 30 devices, and their builds become available within minutes with no review step. External testers are everyone else, up to 10,000 per app, invited by email or through a public link. That second group is the one that costs you time, because the first build of each version you expose to external testers goes through Beta App Review at Apple.

Testers install the TestFlight app from the App Store, accept the invite, and get the build. Every build carries a hard 90-day expiry. On day 91 the app refuses to launch and the tester sees a message telling them to ask for a new one. There's no extension, no grace period, no admin override.

Apple bought TestFlight in 2014 and it has been the only sanctioned beta route on iOS ever since. Since 2021 a single TestFlight build can serve iOS, iPadOS and macOS, and testers can send feedback with a screenshot straight from the app.

Why it matters for a fleet

TestFlight is genuinely good at its job. Crash logs come back attached to the build, tester feedback is centralized, and you can run several build groups against different versions at once. Use it for your QA team and your pilot users.

Then stop. The reasons it breaks as a distribution channel for a managed fleet are structural, not cosmetic. The 90-day clock means somebody has to ship a new build every quarter or 300 field technicians lose their app on the same morning. Each tester needs a personal Apple Account and an invitation they have to accept, which is the opposite of silent install. The app is not a managed app, so you can't push managed app configuration into it, you can't pin a version, and a selective wipe won't remove it. And external groups drag you through Apple review for something that is never going public.

The giveaway is what happens when a tester leaves the company: their invite lives on their Apple Account, not in your device inventory.

How Appaloosa handles it

For internal iOS apps that need to reach real users, Appaloosa distributes signed IPA files and Custom Apps from Apple Business Manager through its own enterprise app store, with versioning, per-group assignment, managed app configuration and silent install on enrolled devices. Teams usually keep TestFlight for QA and move pilots and production onto the channel described on the Mobile Application Management page.