Testflight install number is incorrect

A month ago, I released a new version for open testers on Testflight. After one week, I found that the number of installs was much lower than the previous version(10 vs 50+). So I check with our testers' latest version on their device. I count how many people updated the latest version by myself. The exact number was much higher than the number shown in the account (50 vs 10).

Then I asked Apple support, he said one possible reason is the number of installs referenced is the number of new installs of the beta build. I searched the official definition of the number of installs, it means the number of installations on devices. And my previous version has very stable numbers except this new one.

I am confused about this issue and what is the exact definition of the number of installs. I would appreciate it if someone can help me. Thanks!

Replies

The testflight stats are total nonsense.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/739565

So far, I've found the public testflight to be mostly worthless. The stats don't change. They seem stuck from maybe day one or two. My app requires Game Center and yet only one new name is on the board despite 70 users with various session numbers. Do users hate Game Center and maybe reject the app for that? That would be some legit info. Nearly 20 appear to be squatting on the "accept" since the start. But I can't really boot them because Apple says these stats can take 72 hours to update. Which I don't understand either. Daily updates would seem painfully slow for testing. 72 hours is an eternity. I also understand why users would be anonymous but some tag could be used so you know Anonymous 1 activity from Anonymous 2. They are just all in the pile other than by device. I do know that the crash number is total since their first use. So if they started on build 0, on build 20 will reflect all crashes 0...20. I do think you can expect a serious fall off. I've used public testflight links myself and even apps I think were fine, there wasn't much useful feedback I could provide and I don't really return to them. I expect a lot of churn for mine as well. But even considering that, the stats are odd.