What are Shadow Official, Beta, and Alpha?
Updated
Shadow Official, Beta, and Alpha are all applications designed to help you use your PC in the cloud, but what's the difference? Which one should you use?
Each of these applications is used for different stages of development.
Shadow Beta and Alpha allow the community to participate in helping us build the best product and experience for Shadow. We recommend that you use Shadow Official for the most stable experience.
In this article, we'll go over the purpose of the Official, Beta, and Alpha applications, and some things you should know about them.
Shadow Official
This application is our bread and butter. In other words, it's the application we recommend you use.
It comes equipped with features, enhancements, and fixes that have been tested in several phases before they finally make the cut.
For the most enjoyable experience Shadow has to offer, we suggest using the Official application, available on our website.
⚠️The Shadow Official application may not have features, enhancements, and bug fixes that are available in Shadow Beta and Shadow Alpha. Our product development teams will generally release updates to the Shadow Official application every 1 - 2 weeks.
Shadow Beta
Shadow Beta is the absolute last phase of testing before new features, enhancements, and fixes go live in Shadow Official.
The Shadow Beta application is available on our website. We invite you to test the latest technology Shadow has to offer and give us your feedback. We may suggest using the Beta or Alpha applications if it offers a solution to your needs.
Note: If you have the Shadow Ghost, you can also enable the Beta version from the Settings.
Shadow Alpha
In 2019, we invited our most engaged users and superfans to check out Shadow Alpha: a new testing phase added before Shadow Beta. This application is dedicated to early-stage product development, so functionality comes first and foremost.
Users should expect an ever-changing UX and a generally unstable build. As noted above, we may suggest using the Alpha or Beta applications if it offers a solution to your needs.
To get Shadow Alpha and talk to the Alpha community, join our Discord server and find the #alpha channel.
Beta and Alpha disclaimer
We know how valuable the Shadow Beta and Shadow Alpha applications are to our users, and when using these applications, we ask you to acknowledge the following:
The Beta and Alpha applications are intended for testing purposes only. You may encounter other bugs or issues when using the Beta or Alpha applications.
Bugs and issues are not always anticipated, but they are expected. This means our Quality Assurance (QA) testers will do their best to minimize the impact of updates, but we may not be able to prepare for every circumstance that arises. This is why your feedback is helpful to our teams.
Please use the Shadow Official application if you have encountered an issue that renders Shadow unusable on the Beta or Alpha applications. Shadow Beta and Alpha are not supported applications.
Still have questions after reading this article?
Feel free to check out our other articles.
You can also contact Shadow support via our form.