Google Play recently introduced the Internal Test channel, expanding the available deployment channels to Internal Test -> Alpha -> Beta -> Production. In contrast to the other channels where deploying is delayed by ~30 minutes, Internal Test will instantly deploy your builds to Play making deployment to device instant! Awesome!

Check out the Internal Test channel at the bottom in the “App Releases” view in Console. It will be a perfect fit in CD pipelines, and QA will instantly fall in love.

App Releases view in Console

The Console team hasn’t updated the deploy sample scripts yet with the Internal Test channel key, so I reached out to the support to get some help with deploying to internal from our CD pipeline. Support gave me a link to the updated Google Play Developer API docs where the key (simply ‘internal’) is documented.

I also modified the deploy sample script to accept the channel to which it deploys as a parameter, here’s a Gist where you can easily see how to deploy to Internal Test programatically (and also the other channels).

Prepare to get your builds from Play the second you deploy. Awesome.