Ship builds straight to Boards

BoardFlight is private build distribution for Board devices. Publish from Unity, a terminal, CI or the Playground; hand a tester an email grant or a code; they install it on their own Board. What they say and how they play comes back to you.

Create an account Download the Unity plugin

Here to install something you were given? You want Redeem a code.

Create an account and a team

Sign up at boardflight.app. A team owns games, package prefixes, testers and API tokens; you name yours the first time you open the dashboard. If you were invited to an existing team, open the invite link instead and skip to step 4.

Claim a package prefix

Your first game does it for you: New game writes a package id such as com.acme.pinball and claims com.acme for the team in the same press. A prefix lets your team publish everything beneath it, and stops anyone else claiming one that overlaps it. To claim another, or to choose yours first: Team settingsDeveloperPackage prefixes.

What the server checks, and what it does not

This is the only thing BoardFlight validates about a build. It reads one fact out of the artifact, the package id (from an APK's manifest or a web bundle's harness-config.json), and checks only whether your team is allowed to publish that. Version name and version code are values you declare and are taken at your word. Whether the bytes install is a question only a Board can answer, which is what step 7 is for.

Create the game

GamesNew game. Choose Web game to build it in your browser with AI or to upload a bundle of your own, or Unity game; the package id is written for you under your team’s prefix and can be changed until you press Create. Channels split who gets which builds: every game starts with internal for your team and public for the library, and you can add more.

Publish a build

Make a web game with Create and start building, or open one you already have and press Launch Playground. Describe what you want; the assistant writes it, the preview runs it, and Publish sends a build to the channel you pick, with no toolchain on your machine.

Hand it to testers

Someone with an account: GameChannelsyour channelAccess, add them by the email they signed up with.
Someone without one: a redeem code, on the same Access tab. Every code comes with a link (boardflight.app/redeem/…) that shows the tester what they are being given, signs them up, and ends on Install for the game.
Someone who should see the dashboard: invite them to the team, at role tester if they should see only what they were explicitly given.
Everybody: GameLibrary page, fill in the page and submit it. BoardFlight reviews a game once; after that it is in the library, where any signed-in account can install it from the public channel.

However they got it, a tester installs from your game’s page. With BoardFlight on their computer and their Board paired, Install puts your newest build on their Board in one press. What your testers will be asked to do →

What a redeem code can be limited to

A code is shown once, can be limited by number of uses or by an expiry date, and can be revoked, which takes the game out of the library of everyone who redeemed it. A copy already on a Board stays there.

See what came back

On a channel's Feedback and Activity tabs, switch on the feedback button and analytics. Testers then report from inside the game: the game's Feedback section shows what they said, and the channel's Activity tab how long they play.

An install that BoardFlight on a tester’s computer does is recorded in the channel’s Activity, with the Board’s own message when a Board refuses one. The hardware check in the next step is how you find a build that will not install before your testers do.

Prefer to ask an AI agent? Connect it to BoardFlight →

Be your own first tester

Install your own game on a Board of your own, the way a tester will. It is the only way to see what they will see. How a tester installs →

With BoardFlight on your computer, each build you publish reaches your Board by itself, unless you switch off automatic updates for it. Publish and see it on your own Board →

To see the whole thing end to end, issue yourself a redeem code and open its link in a private window: that is what lands in your tester's hands.

Have a Board check every build before testers see it

Only a Board can tell you whether a build works; reading a package id out of it says nothing about whether it runs. On a machine with a Board on its network:

curl -fsSL https://boardflight.app/cli/install.sh | sh
export BOARDFLIGHT_TOKEN=bft_…      # a "Hardware runner" token
boardflight runner --name "bench b5438"

It claims queued builds, installs and launches each one on the Board, watches for a few seconds and reports back. In a game's SettingsBuilds you can check every build on publish, and hide a build from testers until it passes, so a build that never installed cannot displace one that works.