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Visual Studio App Center Azure Pipelines, Application Insights & Azure App Testing (App Center Retirement)

Legacy names Visual Studio App Center, HockeyApp, Xamarin Test Cloud

Cloud CI/CD build pipelines, OpenTelemetry application crash and mobile analytics, and automated UI testing services replacing retired Visual Studio App Center capabilities.

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Naming timeline

  1. HockeyApp & Xamarin Test Cloud

    · Microsoft Acquisitions (HockeyApp Dec 2014, Xamarin Feb 2016)

    Provided beta app distribution, crash reporting, and cloud-hosted mobile device UI testing prior to consolidation.

  2. Visual Studio App Center

    · General Availability (Previewed as Visual Studio Mobile Center Nov 2016)

    Unified build, automated UI testing, beta distribution, crash diagnostics, analytics, and CodePush for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS apps.

  3. Azure Pipelines, Application Insights & Azure App Testing (App Center Retirement)Current name

    · Visual Studio App Center Retirement

    Retired the App Center portal and APIs on March 31, 2025, transitioning builds to Azure Pipelines, crash/analytics telemetry to Azure Monitor Application Insights, and UI testing to Azure App Testing.

What replaced Visual Studio App Center?

Visual Studio App Center has been superseded by Azure Pipelines, Application Insights & Azure App Testing (App Center Retirement), with the latest change on 31 March 2025 (Visual Studio App Center Retirement). Earlier names covered by this entry also include HockeyApp, Xamarin Test Cloud. Cloud CI/CD build pipelines, OpenTelemetry application crash and mobile analytics, and automated UI testing services replacing retired Visual Studio App Center capabilities. The underlying legacy API or CLI surface is deprecated, so a technical migration is required.

Also known as

  • Visual Studio Mobile Center
  • App Center Build, Test, Distribute, Diagnostics & Analytics
  • Azure Monitor Mobile Analytics

Technical identifiers

Legacy identifiers deprecated. The underlying API or CLI surface for the legacy name is officially deprecated, so this change requires a technical migration rather than a label update.

ARM Resource Providers (Microsoft.*)Microsoft.Insights/components https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/_apis/pipelines Microsoft.LoadTestService/playwrightWorkspaces
Azure CLI (az) / PowerShellaz pipelines az monitor app-insights az load
Entra ID / Azure RBAC RolesApplication Insights Component Contributor Monitoring Contributor Azure DevOps Administrator
Terraform Resources (azurerm_*)azurerm_application_insights azuredevops_build_definition

The standalone 'api.appcenter.ms' REST API, 'appcenter-cli' NPM package, and App Center SDK endpoints were retired on March 31, 2025 in favor of Azure Pipelines, Azure Monitor Application Insights, and Azure App Testing.

Notes & disambiguation

  • Built by combining HockeyApp (acquired December 2014, retired November 2019), Xamarin Test Cloud (acquired February 2016), and CodePush into Visual Studio Mobile Center (preview November 2016) and Visual Studio App Center (GA November 15, 2017).
  • In March 2024, Microsoft announced the retirement of Visual Studio App Center effective March 31, 2025 (with an extended support window arranged for Analytics and Diagnostics migration to Azure Monitor Application Insights and Azure Monitor Mobile Analytics).
  • Official migration paths map App Center Build and Distribute to Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions, App Center Diagnostics and Analytics to Azure Monitor Application Insights, and App Center Test to Azure App Testing / Playwright Workspaces.

Sources & official documentation

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