Do followers need an account?

No. They confirm their email address once and can stop with one tap from any email.

Can I see who installed?

Not through followers. Followers are not testers; you see a count and masked addresses. Who installed is part of install analytics on Pro and Team.

What if I upload five builds in an hour?

Followers get one email about the newest build, at most one per channel every 6 hours.

Can I remove a follower?

Yes, from the Testing page, or with appforshare channel followers --channel beta --app --remove .

AppForShare Create a free account

Testers follow your build link and hear about new builds

Pro and Team

A channel link always opens the newest build, but nobody knows a new build is there until you tell them. So the link gets pasted into chats again and again, and the people who were not watching test an old build.

With channel followers, anyone with the link can tap "Email me new builds" on the channel page. They confirm once by email, and from then on they get one short email when you put a new build into the channel.

Start free See plans

Example

Beta channel, followers

Confirmed38 of 200
Waiting for confirmation2
jo***@example.comFollowed Nov 9, Remove

Followers are not testers: you see a count and masked addresses, never installs by name.

Made for

Developers with outside testers or clients who are not in the team chat
Open betas shared through one link on a website or a README
Agencies who want clients to see new builds without a daily message

What it ends

Re-sending the same channel link every time a build is ready
Testers reporting bugs in a build you already replaced
Adding every client as a tester just to send them a notice

How it works

Step 1
Share the channel link
The channel page and the install page of the build it opens now show an "Email me new builds" box.
Step 2
People confirm once
They enter an email address and get one confirmation email. The address counts only after a tap on the page it opens. Unconfirmed addresses are deleted after 48 hours.
Step 3
One email per new build
When you put a new build into the channel, from the dashboard, the CLI or CI, followers get one plain email with the channel link, in the language of the page they followed from.

Plain, few and easy to stop

Each email is transactional: the app name, the channel link and the release notes when the build has no password. Tracking is off and there is no promotion. Every email has a one tap "stop these emails" link and List-Unsubscribe headers, so mail apps show their own unsubscribe button.

At most one email per channel every 6 hours. Builds put in between collapse into one email about the newest. Emails go out after the build is processed, so they are not instant.

Limits and privacy

Up to 200 followers per channel on Pro and 2,000 on Team, confirmed and pending together. The form has a human check, is rate limited and refuses throwaway inboxes, and it gives the same answer whether an address is new or already follows. Addresses are stored encrypted and deleted when the person stops, when you remove them, when the channel is deleted or when the account closes.

You see how many people follow, with masked addresses such as jo***@example.com, and can remove anyone from the project's Testing page, the CLI or the API. Your AI coding assistant can read the counts with the MCP tool channel_followers.

Good to know

Not on private projects: invited testers there get their own new build emails on Team.
Not on Free. The one Free channel has no follow box.
Not on extra share links of a build.
It is not a newsletter or a marketing list: one notice per new build, nothing else.

Questions

Do followers need an account?: No. They confirm their email address once and can stop with one tap from any email.
Can I see who installed?: Not through followers. Followers are not testers; you see a count and masked addresses. Who installed is part of install analytics on Pro and Team.
What if I upload five builds in an hour?: Followers get one email about the newest build, at most one per channel every 6 hours.
Can I remove a follower?: Yes, from the Testing page, or with appforshare channel followers --channel beta --app <bundle id> --remove <email>.