The Logos Beta Program has a long legacy going back to Logos Desktop 4.0a in 2009. We appreciate all the customers who have opted into beta testing, and we've benefited greatly from your feedback and bug reports over the years.
However, the way we make software has changed significantly since then, and the beta program no longer aligns with how we ship Logos. As a result, the v50 betas will be the last betas we ship, and there will be no beta versions of Logos v51 or later.
Here's why that's good news for everyone.
First, it means Logos users won't wait as long for improvements. In the old world, the beta program mostly covered minor updates in between major new versions. A five-week beta period worked well for that — because the improvements were relatively minor, it didn't matter too much that everyone else had to wait. But that tradeoff makes less sense when many releases contain meaningful new features alongside those minor improvements. Without a public beta, we can shorten the gap between writing code and you all enjoying the improvements.
Second, everyone's feedback will now shape how we improve new features. Major features were tested in a private beta group for months before a major launch, but we often weren't able to improve features after general release. Now, thanks to the subscription model, we've been able to change that. With Study Assistant, for example, we shipped a major new feature to everyone and continued to improve it based on all the great feedback we received. So ending the beta program doesn't mean we're stopping listening to product feedback — it means we're listening to feedback from even more people than before.
If you were using the Logos beta channel, thank you — your feedback has been incredibly helpful.
FAQs
I'm currently using a beta version. What should I do?
If you're using a beta version of the Mac, Windows, or Android app, you shouldn't need to do anything. When v51 releases, your app should update automatically to the stable version. (If you want to make doubly sure, on desktop, you can set update channel to default if you have concerns.)
However, iOS doesn't have a way of moving everyone off the beta version. If you're using a beta version of the Logos iOS app via TestFlight, you'll need to manually install the latest version from the App Store. This will replace your TestFlight build while keeping all your documents and settings intact.
Is there a secret mailing list where I can sign up for private beta testing?
No, we do not have any beta program, public or private.
How do I report bugs? Will Logos staff see my post?
Every release, our program managers and QA team will post the release notes and sometimes write about new features (Matt Mattox is a QA engineer; Adam Borries, Savannah Sandberg, and David Vela are our Program Managers). If you find a new bug in a recently released version, replying to one of those posts will get their attention and mine.
If you're reporting an older bug, there's a large Report a bug button at the top of the community home page. Joe McCune is a member of our customer service team, and he regularly monitors the forums for those reports.
If there’s no beta program, does this mean everyone’s a beta tester now?
No. We wouldn't make this change if we hadn't first invested in the testing infrastructure to support it. We've improved our automated test coverage, internal dogfooding, and ability to stage rollouts, which means we're catching issues earlier and more reliably than a five-week public beta could. To demonstrate how much things have improved, since the release of Logos 10 (31 versions ago!), only 5 versions have NOT needed a later update to fix important bugs. Three of those five were the last three versions: v48, v49, and v50 (so far!).
Will there ever be opportunities to test experimental Logos features in the future?
For big features, we may sometimes ask for early feedback before a general release. We have no immediate plans to do this, but if/when we need early feedback, we’ll likely add a setting in Logos to let you opt in to that particular feature. The advantage of this approach over installing a beta version is that you’d be able to opt back out without uninstalling everything.
What’s going to happen to the beta forums?
We plan to keep them around, but probably make them read-only. There’s a lot of really helpful information and history there, and we don't want to lose it.
