No TestFlight invite email gets sent for internal users

Question

I set up my application for TestFlight. For external users it is waiting for review. But if I want to invite internal users, I select them and press invite. iTunes Connects says they are invited now, but none of the invited emails gets an invitation email.

Do you know what I am doing wrong?

Related: [Legacy TestFlight Service Shutting Down on February 26](https://developer.apple.com/testflight/update/) on Apple Developer. — jww, Mar 27 '15 at 19:53

Matt H · Answer 1 · 2014-12-22T15:49:43.357

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For new builds on the same version, once the build becomes available, I had to turn OFF testing for that version and immediately turn it back on. This instantly sent an Update notification to TestFlightApp, emailed the testers, and allowed users install the new build.

TestFlight testing on/off switch

edited Dec 22 '14 at 15:49

answered Dec 18 '14 at 16:21

Matt H

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Awesome! This worked perfectly, thanks. It seems to be still some nasty bugs on Apple Testflight for now... – Martin Dec 18 '14 at 20:10
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This worked. Feels like the TestFlight Beta should have been put through a beta! – David Wong Dec 18 '14 at 22:32
Agreed, I always have to turn off TestFlight Beta Testing and then toggle it back on. At that point the build I had just posted will trigger a push notification to my phone for testing. – Joe Dec 21 '14 at 17:49
This worked for me too! I'd gotten stuck making a new version of my app. From 0.1 to 0.1.1, the way this broke into a new section on the site had me confused. Turning test flight beta testing on for my 0.1.1 build automatically turned it off on my previous 0.1 build. But left me needing to invite users again.. It was all broken till i toggled the testing on and off again on my 0.1.1 version. All very confusing. – jimbobuk Jan 02 '15 at 22:18
This worked, but does have a side effect of deleting the "TestFlight Beta Information" What To Test as well as Beta App Review Information - so don' forget to re-enter that after each new build. – Graham Dawson Feb 13 '15 at 22:54
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I'm not seeing the `TestFlight Beta Testing (?)` switch. Where is it? Is it only available if I do something else? I'm sort of blocked at the starting gate, here. :\ – Olie Feb 24 '15 at 19:03
@Olie, if you go to My apps -> app-to-test -> Prerelease, then there is a switch at the far right of the version number – Bjørn Egil Mar 20 '15 at 19:06
Yes, I know where it's *supposed to be*, but it wasn't there initially. Turns out that, even if you're doing internal testing only, your app has to be uploaded and "reviewed" before that switch becomes available. It's all there & clear now but, at the time, I couldn't figure out why the switch wasn't available. Now we know! – Olie Mar 20 '15 at 22:36
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I did that 10 times. It did not send any invitation!! – Hawk Mar 23 '15 at 05:41
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This did not work for me. Also, when I add users to iTunes connect 'User's and Roles', they too do not receive invitation emails despite an alert saying 'an invitation emails has been sent'. Perhaps Apple can spend some of it's $100 billion in cash reserves on building a website that works. – Zigglzworth Mar 23 '15 at 10:24
Took a couple of minutes, and the invite email finally arrives! – Hlung Mar 27 '15 at 17:45
I think the key is to keep doing this. I tried until it eventually arrived. – Sebyddd Jun 26 '15 at 13:36
Turning it off and on again did the trick for me too. Because i switched between uploding with XCode to build servers my Version and buildcode decreased, which seemed to confuse Testflight. – r-hold Sep 05 '15 at 05:20
This switch no longer exists. You have to select "Not available for testing" and then select the version again. However, this still did not work for me. – jowie Jul 28 '16 at 14:21

score 22 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 03 '14 at 23:02

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This is an outstanding bug. A report has been filed, see details below. To get Apple to address this issue sooner, please submit a similar report through https://bugreport.apple.com

Internal Tester Invite Bug Report

answered Nov 03 '14 at 23:02

emiidee

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Did you have any answer. I´m doing a report like yours – Jaimoto Feb 28 '15 at 00:29
Haven't yet, I've just been testing locally and through external testers. – emiidee Mar 01 '15 at 01:05
Any update on this by Apple? I'm running into the exact same problem. – Myxtic Mar 22 '15 at 06:06
Can you post the content of the report in Pastebin or something ? Will be easier for most people to copy paste :) – Danpe Jun 01 '15 at 13:21
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Still an issue in 2017, do Apple even give a damn about their developers? – cheznead Sep 18 '17 at 17:33
@cheznead they not :) – Zaporozhchenko Oleksandr Apr 25 '19 at 10:32

score 16 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 07 '14 at 18:22

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I've been round and round on this as well. What finally worked for me was to clear the internal tester status on the user, double check that the account was removed from the Internal / External list and then re-enable tester status for the user. Invite as an internal tester then worked for that user.

answered Nov 07 '14 at 18:22

EPage_Ed

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kind of worked for me. It finally sent invitations, but when you click on them you get "This is not a valid invitation"! Oh hang on, this is because I actually got sent multiple emails at the same time. I had to make sure to click on the invite in the most recent one! I hope this helps someone else. – narco Oct 13 '15 at 19:56

Sean · Answer 4 · 2015-04-15T16:07:36.613

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I needed to resend the invitation email to an internal tester. The following work for me:

deselect the invited tester and save. this remove the invite. re-select the same tester and save. this added the tester and re-send the email.

Also, you have to click on the link in the email to see the update. Otherwise, the TestFlight app still shows no app available until you click on the link. I found the email was in the spam folder in the first place ...

edited Apr 15 '15 at 16:07

answered Nov 18 '14 at 16:55

Sean

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How do I deselect the invited tester? – zaph Jan 09 '15 at 17:52
Did not work for me either! It still shows the last build which was tested previously and did not update to the current one – Hawk Mar 23 '15 at 05:45
for me clicking the previous invite email like build 1.0 worked for the latest build (1.2) and opened correctly in the test flight app by clicking "open in test flight" – Ammar Mujeeb Sep 18 '15 at 16:42
this worked for me... but WTF apple? Every time we push a new build we need to delete and re-add invited users? – aherrick Dec 28 '16 at 02:47

score 12 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 24 '14 at 10:39

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You have to fill the "What to Test" section. After you will be able to send invites for internal members.

answered Nov 24 '14 at 10:39

Gábor Hegedűs

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this is happening after send invites has been pressed – David Nelson Apr 14 '15 at 19:24
It did work for me with new build. Was in 'Processing' for a while, every time I turn on the testing, and refresh the page, it turns off automatically. I filled "What to Test" and then the status changed directly to "Active" – Hawk May 13 '15 at 05:49

score 8 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 27 '17 at 19:26

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This is an issue with TestFlight. As a workaround,

Remove the existing testers
Save
Add them again

:)

answered Jan 27 '17 at 19:26

Kaey

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Tried it - no luck – bashan Jul 28 '17 at 06:37
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Perfect. Worked for me. Thanks – Thorbjørn Kappel Hansen Aug 07 '18 at 23:44
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2019. And this is STILL my solution for this problem. Good job Apple. – Pepeng Hapon Oct 18 '19 at 04:02

shim · Answer 7 · 2015-03-27T19:15:55.503

Working with the new Testflight has been pretty frustrating for me as well. After a prolonged phone call to Apple's developer support (1800 633 2152) I finally got to a senior support representative who gave me the following steps and also reassured me that they are aware that this is a workaround and that these issues will be fixed soon. Wish Apple would just own up to their mistakes though and openly apologize to developers etc. This worked for me immediately (all emails got sent out, including ones for previous versions). It also did not require me to delete any users from Users & Roles, which was nice. Shouldn't matter, but I did this in Safari, and after clearing all history, quitting, and re-opening the browser and signing back in.

Turn off Testflight Beta testing for the build under that app's "Prerelease" (green toggle switch to the top right of the active build)
Deselect the checkboxes for the users in "Internal Testers" and/or external testers, then click save.
Go to "Users & Roles" in iTunes Connect, then "TestFlight Beta Testers"
Deselect all the users and click save. (For external testers you may need to delete them and re-add them. I didn't have any external testers in my case so I don't know for sure.)
Reselect the users and click save
Return to the Prerelease section for the app and click "Internal Testers".
Reselect the users you want and click save.
Back on the Builds page, click to turn TestFlight Beta testing back on for the build you want.

After doing that in that order, I immediately got sent all the missing invites, and also a new user confirmation email that I had tried to send myself.

Note a related problem I had was with users who appeared on both the internal and external list. Try to avoid that because it is buggy.

EDIT: so even though I went through all this, when I tried to use the link in the email I finally got from TestFlight, it said it's invalid!

I did a couple more on/off cycles and I eventually got one that works. Also turning on Testflight testing before selecting the testers may have helped.

It sends out the emails in order, so your working email should come after the invalid ones, for me its current taking around 2 hours to get the email. — zimmryan, Mar 27 '15 at 18:19
Worked for me. Thanks! And "will be fixed soon"... This was well over a year ago. Apple are so full of ****! — jowie, Jul 28 '16 at 14:30

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 10 '14 at 21:05

My solution: Use an App Store Distribution profile, not an Ad Hoc Distribution Profile for submitting your app.

And secondly, you have to recreate the App Store Distribution Profile before submitting the app. This will add the betatest entitlement to the profile.

Maybe you need to remove the internal testers from the list and add them again.

Anton Ogarkov · Answer 9 · 2015-03-05T06:42:00.137

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My problem was I had invited everyone from internal testers to external testers as well. Removing them from externals has enabled the internal testing for them.

edited Mar 05 '15 at 06:42

answered Mar 05 '15 at 06:25

Anton Ogarkov

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Abandoned Cart · Answer 10 · 2015-04-05T14:14:49.400

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Click on the Internal Testers tab
Deselect the testers not receiving invites and Save
Return to the Builds tab
Click the Invite Testers link that appears
Reselect the previously deselected testers and Save

Ran into the issue and this worked without a lot of extra / wasted effort

edited Apr 05 '15 at 14:14

answered Apr 05 '15 at 06:39

Abandoned Cart

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score 2 · Answer 11 · edited Jul 27 '15 at 20:02

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Check your Trash/ Bin! All my 6 invites were automatically moved there because I unsubscribed from testing last week.

edited Jul 27 '15 at 20:02

Matt

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answered Jul 27 '15 at 16:20

Lisa N'paisan

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score 1 · Answer 12 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

The problem with inviting an internal tester is that you cannot have an internal and external tester with the same apple ID.

Although deleted and recreated the user in user roles I still had the same problem. When I removed the duplicate email from External Testers and went back to Internal Testers, the invite was sent.

Source : Check this SO link

Edit : I will still like to mention that when I tried it then I had to use an email which was not connected to iTunesConnect earlier. For some reason, Apple doesn't allow an existing iTunesConnect User to register as Internal Tester on Testflight and I don't have any explanation for this issue. I believe even Apple doesn't have an explanation and I assume its a major bug ;)

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Jun 09 '15 at 03:53

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This seems obvious, but I didn't see a main reply with this solution. Make sure your app is in "Beta" status (already through Beta review by Apple). If it is still in Prerelease status but has no beta, external users will never get in invitation email.

answered Jun 09 '15 at 03:53

Mark Shust at M.academy

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yood · Answer 14 · 2017-11-06T18:04:46.440

This is what worked for me in November 2017.

Get the build approved by Apple for beta.
Add the approved build in #1 to an app submission and save.
Now you should see the resend invitation buttons in TestFlight > Builds: iOS under the External Testers column, or TestFlight > Testers & Groups: All Testers under the Status column for each tester.

I'm not sure what triggered the invite email to be sent to internal testers, as there was only a button for external ones, but soon after I did #2, I got an invite as an internal tester.

Also, as I didn't track this process too carefully, I may have triggered the solution by changing the marketing build version in my app submission (#2) to be the same as my beta build version.

Whats the difference between beta version and release version? and how i tell apple that its a beta version? — Mina Gerges, Jan 28 '20 at 13:23

score 0 · Answer 15 · edited Mar 24 '15 at 15:49

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This happened to me as well. In the end I just turned off beta testing for the build, re-enabled and re-invited the internal testers, email came through the second time around.

edited Mar 24 '15 at 15:49

Rayfleck

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answered Oct 27 '14 at 00:39

Nathan Kot

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This did not work for me. I also noticed I am unable to remove external testers that were added inadvertently. *mutters something about it just working* – Tim Sneed Oct 27 '14 at 11:32
hmmm i seem to be able to remove external users though, yeahhh something just doesn't feel right with the new test flight stuff, invited a friend to be internal tester and when they login to itunes connect it says something about a completely different app – Nathan Kot Oct 27 '14 at 20:56
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I can confirm that I have the same problems as user3605993 and Tim Sneed related to TestFlight. Is this thing completely broken? – CaptainCOOLGUY Nov 01 '14 at 01:04

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Nov 30 '14 at 23:10

I have had the same issue. 3 accounts altogether (1 mine, 2 others) initially, mine worked and both of the others. When I tried to update, only one worked. Since the only similarities with the other 2 was that they were GMAIL accounts, so I added one of my apps (to my phone, and I had to log onto test flight using it) - all seems to be working. I was told the Google spam filter was filtering these out and I couldn't figure out how to allow them through.

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Mar 19 '15 at 16:04

0

Please do not check/uncheck the Internal Tester status - sending another invite to these guys is a PAIN!

I simply incremented my build from 1.0 to 1.0.1 and submitted the app. The key is - to see if the APP is available right away as 'Active', then great! Else, if its sitting in the 'Processing' section of iTunes Connect (like a Fumb Duck), no use trying to revive that.

So, as soon as you find your app in the Processing Section - wait for about an hour, watch another episode of House of Cards 2.0 (3.0 is boring).. then..

Increment Build - add an 0.1 to the current one
Validate - dont forget to validate (I validated 3 times, just to be ultra sure)
Submit
Add Beta Information and Ta Da!

Cheers!

answered Mar 19 '15 at 16:04

ndroid dev

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Thanks for your effort. I'm just wondering, have you noticed the question is already 4 months old? So probably you wish to add options for future readers? – peter_the_oak Mar 19 '15 at 16:12
may be useful info for some but doesn't ans the question .. imo – Muds Mar 19 '15 at 16:26
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I tried few times, and every time it sits in 'Processing' section like a Fumb Duck. I even updated the version itself to new one and it did not work. It worked with previous builds just three days ago though! Sending another invite did not work as you said. – Hawk Mar 23 '15 at 05:58

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Mar 24 '15 at 15:46

A bit heavy-handed, but it works.

Delete the user: Itunes Connect, Users and Roles, Edit, Select user, Delete
Re-create the user: (+), name, email, Next, Next, select 'Technical', Save
User will get a confirmation email, once they accept,
Itunes Connect, Users and Roles, Tap User's email in the list, Enable "Internal Testing"
My Apps, Select App, Prerelease, Internal Testers, Select the user, Invite.
User will get an email invitation, which they should accept from their device.

You're good to go.

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered May 08 '15 at 14:21

I tried it all, but none worked. Than I realise I was using a new email created for this sole purpose and hadn't used it in the App Store yet.

So the solution is simple:

Log in with your new Apple ID in the App Store.

You will be requested to finish your sign-up, filling info about address and title.

No credit card information is needed, just leave it as none.

After accepting the terms and log in in App Store, deselect the internal tester user in iTC, save it, select it again and then invite.

All previous invitations got delivered in no time and all together.

Another bug i'm facing is that the app never finishing install in test flight app, but actually it is installed, just leave the app, and you will find it in the home screen.

Hope it helps someone.

score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Apr 24 '17 at 18:01

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Since the very recent new update to iTunes Connect, there is a prominent “Resend Invitation” button on all internal users who have not yet redeemed their invitation.

answered Apr 24 '17 at 18:01

mxcl

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I'm not seeing this button anywhere in the TestFlight section. Where did you see it? – yood Nov 06 '17 at 17:39
Testers & Groups -> All Testers -> Status – mxcl Nov 06 '17 at 18:01
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Thanks, I found it but only after I added the build to an appstore submission – yood Nov 06 '17 at 18:03

score 0 · Answer 21 · answered Dec 17 '20 at 19:46

only users with permissions can be added as Testers

steps to follow.

https://appstoreconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/ra/ng/users_roles
https://appstoreconnect.apple.com/apps/1494800176/testflight/users
```
Internal Group
        App Store Connect Users
```

score 0 · Answer 22 · answered Apr 19 '23 at 19:50

I had this issue, internal test not getting the invitation mail.

I desperation I thought that it might work if I added the tester as an external tester. But before I could add a tester as an external tester, I had to send the app for test review.

When the app was approved for testing, the tester, suddely got all the different invitations I had tried to send the day before. So then no need to add her as an external tester...

No TestFlight invite email gets sent for internal users

22 Answers22

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