Joining the beta test

The test is closed: the app installs from Google Play, but its listing is visible only to participants. You need a Google account — the same one Play is signed in with on the phone.

Three steps

1. Join the testers group: groups.google.com/g/netwrench-testers → "Join group". If the page will not open, send an empty email to netwrench-testers+subscribe@googlegroups.com and answer the confirmation.
2. Open the opt-in link: play.google.com/apps/testing/app.netwrench → "Become a tester".
3. On the same page use "Download it on Google Play" and install the app normally. Updates arrive on their own.

The app is free; it contains no payments and no subscriptions.

If the listing will not open

• The account in the group and the account in Play on the phone must be the same one. Tap the profile icon in the top right of Play and check which account is active.
• Access does not appear instantly after joining the group — sometimes it takes a few hours. Leaving the Play page and opening the opt-in link again usually helps.
• "Item not found" nearly always means one of three things: "Become a tester" was not pressed, a different account is signed in, or access has not propagated yet.
• If none of that helps, write to onufriev.serg@gmail.com

How long it runs

Google grants an app general availability only after an uninterrupted closed test: at least 12 participants who stay in it for 14 consecutive days. So please do not leave the test or uninstall the app before then, even on days you have no reason to open it.

You can leave at any time from the same opt-in page — "Leave the program". After that the app stops receiving updates through Play.

Permissions on first run

• Location — without it Android does not return Wi-Fi scan results, and the survey and link-quality screens stay empty. The app never reads a coordinate and never transmits one.
• Notifications (Android 13 and newer) — needed only by the speed-test server and the status-bar speed indicator.
• Nothing else is requested. Router credentials are typed in by you and kept in the Android Keystore.

What to include in a report

• the version: Settings → About;
• phone model and Android version;
• how the phone is connected: Wi-Fi, Ethernet through an adapter, mobile data;
• router vendor, model and firmware version, if the problem involves the router;
• which screen, what you expected and what you saw;
• a screenshot.

The app sends no analytics and no crash reports, so a problem only becomes known through an email: onufriev.serg@gmail.com

The debug build, outside Play

Alongside the beta, a debug build sits on the home page. It is newer than what is in Play and is there for when a fix has to be checked straight away.

The separate package means it installs next to the Play version rather than replacing it.

1. Download the APK from the download section.
2. Open the file — from the download notification, or through Files → Downloads.
3. Android will ask about installing from an unknown source. Grant it to the app you are opening the file from — the browser or the file manager — and go back.
4. Play Protect will offer to send the app for scanning. For a file signed with something other than a Play key that is ordinary: choose "Install anyway".

It updates by installing over the top, keeping its data. To check the file: shasum -a 256 <file> (macOS, Linux) or certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256 (Windows) — the result must match the SHA-256 on the home page. Only the latest build is kept on the site, so a link to the previous one stops working.

A debug build also shows build time, commit and branch under About — quote those in a report.