Written for anyone who wants to know precisely what they are joining, and for our own reference. If you only want the short version, read Being a Beebo tester instead.
Since November 2023, Google has required personal developer accounts — as opposed to registered organisations — to run a closed test before they can publish an app to everyone. The aim is to stop low-quality and throwaway apps reaching the store, by making a developer demonstrate that real people have used the app on real devices. Beebo Entertainment is a personal account, so the requirement applies to us.
This is why we ask people not to leave early. Losing one tester on day 12 does not cost us two days — it costs us a full fortnight with a replacement.
There is no rule that testers must open the app daily, and no minimum session count or screen time. Anyone telling you otherwise has confused Google's requirement with advice. What Google does say is that developers should give testers clear instructions and encourage them to use as many features as possible.
That matters because of what comes next.
Once 12 testers have completed their unbroken 14 days, we apply for production access in the Play Console. That application is a three-part form, and Google reads it:
Google typically reviews within about seven days. Approval is not automatic — the review reads the substance of the answers. This is the real reason we would rather have ten testers who genuinely poked at the app than fifty silent installs: one of the questions we must answer is literally which features they used.
Beebo is a client for a home media server. It plays the video files already sitting on somebody's own Windows PC, and it carries no catalogue of its own. Taken literally that would mean every tester needed a spare computer, which is an unreasonable thing to ask of a friend doing you a favour.
So the app has a “Look around without a server” mode. Choosing it opens the app properly, with everything that genuinely needs no server working for real — the road-trip games, Campsite Mode, the star chart, the scavenger hunt, the shared packing list, campfire sounds, the badges, and a sample video. The library tabs explain plainly that a library lives on your own computer, rather than showing an error.
A tester with a Windows PC can install the server too and test the whole product. That is more useful to us, but it is not required, and nobody should feel obliged.
You can leave whenever you like — there is an opt-out link, and uninstalling is always your choice. We would simply appreciate a message first, so we can recruit a replacement rather than discover the shortfall on day 14.
Count me in → ← Back to the short version
Source for the requirements on this page: Google Play Console Help — closed testing requirements for personal developer accounts. Where this page and Google disagree, Google is right — tell us and we will correct it.
