How Does Testflight Do It

How does TestFlight do it?

This was possible before TestFlight rolled out a service. The technique stemmed out of the enterprise distribution mechanism. Since 4.0 devices have supported install from web.

Remember - you still need to sign the beta distribution for a select set of UDIDs you can't just willy nilly install it on any device. All they are doing is taking the email the IPA step out of things.

See:

• http://www.alexcurylo.com/blog/2010/08/27/wireless-ad-hoc-distribution/

Update: I want to say that Test Flight is one of the most helpful tools I've used when developing though. Just taking the IPA emailing out of the picture was an understatement- I was just trying to call out the technical mechanism. They do a fantastic job managing the whole beta process. Getting new devices enrolled. Notifying users etc.

Beta test through Testflight to people without without apple ID account

All of your testers must have an Apple ID since without one they cannot download and install the TestFlight app from the App Store, but you don't need to know what it is.

You can add any email address as an external TestFlight tester. The email doesn't have to be an Apple ID.

The tester will receive an email with an invitation code that they redeem inside the TestFlight app. Once they redeem the code your test versions will be associated with the AppleID they are using with the App Store.

Does testflight reviews app again if i up the version number?

You may want to look into these documents

https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/devdc42b26b8
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/distributing-your-app-for-beta-testing-and-releases

How to notify testers of new build in TestFlight?

Ok. It baffles me how extremely bad Apples dev-websites and services are.

So, in my newly uploaded build, there are two "groups". One called "iTunes Connect Users", which are the internal users who are invited to the developer team. They got an email and a notification immediately when I clicked "Start Testing", because a review is not needed for internal testing.
The other group is called "External testers". The build is available for them, but they didn't get notified when the build was approved by Apple.

I was considering removing the "External testers"-group from the build, hoping for a notification when re-adding the group. But, I also thought the group might first receive "This build is no longer available for testing" or something if I removed the group from the build.

I figured I wanted to test this first, to see if testers receive a notification when I remove their group from a build, so I created a new group (called "ExternalTest"), added one single (new)test-member, and added this new group to the same active build, so that there are three groups under that build.

At the very moment I clicked "add group to build", all of our test-devices here, and apparently every single beta-tester, received a push notification from TestFlight, saying that the new build is available to test. Now, our "installed"-number is skyrocketing, as people are updating.

What the hell, Apple?
I agree with you, @Nitish, TestFlight sucks badly.

Can I add a new TestFlight version without adding a version to the App Store?

For every build you upload to iTunes Connect you can decide whether you want to share it with testers on TestFlight and/or submit it for app store review.

When you share builds with TestFlight Apple will review these builds too and you can receive warnings to them too. The initial TestFlight build will be tested more extensively.

Do I need to add the new version to the App Store settings first?

I don't know about which app store settings you are talking about, but all you have to do before uploading to iTunes connect is set the code signing and provisioning profiles first in XCode and Apple's development portal and make sure you increment the build number on every new upload because the upload will fail if you try to upload a build with a build number already present on iTunes Connect.

Once uploaded iTunes Connect will start processing it and then you can share it for testing with TestFlight or submit for app store release review.

You can read more info about TestFlight in Apple's dev site

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