Android testing
The Android app needs a few testers first.
Google requires a small group to use a new app for two weeks before it can reach the Play Store. If you have an Android phone and a few minutes across a fortnight, you can be one of them, and you'd be using the real thing, not a demo.
An Android phone
Once you're on the list you install it from the Play Store like any other app, and it updates the same way. There's nothing to sideload and no developer setup.
Two weeks on your phone
Google's requirement is that at least twelve people keep it installed for fourteen days. You don't have to open it daily or do anything on a schedule. Leaving it there counts.
Tell us what's wrong
Anything confusing, broken, or missing. Most useful of all: a resource listing with the wrong hours, a dead phone number, or an organization that no longer serves who it says it does.
Straight about it
What you'd be using, and what to expect.
It's the real app, not a preview
The full reviewed directory: state-specific resources for all 50 states, Washington, DC, and five U.S. territories, plus national and federal listings. Saved resources, the check-in, and the crisis lines are all live. Nothing is stubbed out for testing.
It will have rough edges
That's what a test is for. Something may look wrong, behave oddly, or change between updates. If you hit something broken, it isn't you. Please tell us what you saw.
Crisis lines don't depend on the test
They dial the same numbers they always have, from every screen, and they work without an account. Same Ground is not an emergency service and does not provide crisis counseling. It connects you to organizations that do. See the crisis lines.
Adults only
Same Ground is for people 18 and over, and that applies to the test as well. You don't need to be a veteran or a first responder to help test it. Plenty of the people this is built for are the families standing alongside them.
Worth knowing before you volunteer
Testing asks for an email the app itself never would.
Google runs closed testing through your Google account. To let you install the app, the Play Store has to recognise the account already on your phone, which means joining the test needs that email address, and for most people it carries their real name.
That is the opposite of how Same Ground works from the inside. In the app you're a pseudonym. A legal name, a document, or an ID is never requested, and never will be.
So it's worth being exact about where the tester address goes: to Google Play, so the store knows you're allowed to install it, and to the Same Ground mailbox so you can be added to the list. It is not stored in the app, it isn't part of your Same Ground account, and it is never sold. When the test ends it stops being needed.
If that trade isn't one you want to make, that is a completely reasonable place to land. Wait for the public release. Nothing is lost by sitting this out, and the browser version is open to you today.
How to join
Write to admin@sameground.net with the subject Android test, from the Google account you use on your Android phone. You'll get back a link that opts you into the test, and instructions for installing from there.
You can leave the test at any time, for any reason, without telling anyone why: uninstall the app and you're done.
Not on Android? Use the private profile in your browser now →