When developers want to test their apps and make sure they work, it's important to test them on groups of people and to ensure that all of the feedback and testing data they get is of a high standard. Google’s Firebase is a pretty comprehensive set of development tools that can help do exactly that, but also so much more. Its goal is to make app development and maintenance easier, with features like detailed crash reporting, user analytics, authentication, and storage. That's why Google is now graduating Firebase App Distribution into stability at this year's Google I/O, pulling it out of the beta that it's been in since the end of 2019.

To be clear, developers have always been able to make use of Firebase App Distribution if they wanted to since its introduction, though now the feature is finally deemed stable and ready for everyone to use.

The importance of Firebase App Distribution can't be understated, as it's an easy way for developers to share their apps with testers automatically, and to track when those testers install and use them. It's not just exiting beta though, as Google is also introducing a few new features to the platform, including simplified group access, release auto-deletion, and bulk tester management. They're available in both the console and the public API.

Even better for developers is that with the new Android SDK, developers can notify testers who are already in the app of an app update. This means that testers can always know if they have the latest version of the app or not, and developers know that their testers will be testing the latest version and are ready to give useful feedback.

If you want to learn more, be sure to check out the official documentation for both iOS and Android in order to get started.