Test Mode

Test mode lets you simulate in-app purchases without involving StoreKit or any external purchase controller. When active, all purchases are faked and product data is retrieved from the Superwall dashboard. This makes it easy to test your entire paywall flow end-to-end, including purchase, restore, and entitlement changes, without needing a StoreKit configuration file or sandbox account.

How it works

When test mode is active:

• Product data comes from the dashboard instead of StoreKit, so you don't need a StoreKit configuration file or App Store Connect products set up.
• Purchases are simulated. Instead of the system payment sheet, a test mode drawer appears letting you choose to complete, abandon, or fail the transaction. All purchase events fire normally, so your analytics and delegate callbacks work as expected.
• Restores are simulated. A restore drawer lets you pick which entitlements to restore.
• A configuration modal appears on launch showing your User ID, purchase controller status, device and user attributes, free trial override, and starting entitlements. You can use this to configure the test session before interacting with your paywalls.
• All events route to sandbox, so test mode activity won't affect your production data.

Activating test mode

There are two ways to activate test mode:

1. From the dashboard

Mark specific users as test store users in the Superwall dashboard. When the SDK detects that the current user's ID matches a test store user from your config, test mode activates automatically. This is the most common approach.

2. From the SDK

Set testModeBehavior on SuperwallOptions before calling configure:

let options = SuperwallOptions()
options.testModeBehavior = .always

Superwall.configure(apiKey: "your-api-key", options: options)

The available behaviors are:

The configuration modal

When test mode activates, a modal appears before you interact with any paywalls. It displays:

• User ID: Your current user ID, with a link to view the user in the dashboard.
• Purchase Controller: Whether you've provided a custom purchase controller.
• Device Attributes: Tap to view all device-level attributes the SDK is tracking.
• User Attributes: Tap to view all user-level attributes.
• Free Trial Override: Override free trial availability for all products. Choose Use Default (respects the product's actual trial status), Force Available, or Force Unavailable.
• Starting Entitlements: If you have entitlements configured, you can set each one to Active or Inactive before dismissing the modal. This lets you test how your paywalls behave for users with different entitlement states.

Tap OK to dismiss the modal and begin testing. Your selections persist across sessions. Tap Reset to Defaults to clear all overrides.

Simulating purchases

When you tap a purchase button on a paywall while test mode is active, a drawer appears instead of the system payment sheet:

The drawer shows the product details and these options:

• Purchase: Simulates a successful purchase. The product's entitlements are activated and your subscription status updates accordingly.
• Failure: Simulates a purchase failure.

All standard Superwall events (transaction_start, transaction_complete, transaction_abandon, transaction_fail, etc.) fire as they normally would, so you can verify your analytics and delegate callbacks.

Simulating restores

When a restore is triggered while test mode is active, a drawer appears letting you select which entitlements to restore and in what state. This is useful for testing how your app handles different restore scenarios.

When to use test mode vs. StoreKit testing

Test mode is ideal for quickly validating your paywall presentation, purchase flows, and entitlement gating without any StoreKit setup. For testing actual StoreKit behavior, use StoreKit testing in Xcode instead.