The Official deviantART Beta Tester program is a team whose membership is available to subscribers. OBT is a group of people who have chosen to beta test new features before they have been released to the general public and help us track down any problems which may still exist.

Due to the size of the deviantART community, often times it is difficult to ensure that a new feature will work successfully for as many community members as possible. We try our best with the people who assist with administrative functions, but this is still a very small group in comparison to the size of the community.

Therefore OBT members try out pre-release versions of new features and provide feedback if they encounter any problems. This in turn assists us greatly in correcting any and all problems which might occur, before the update is launched to the general public.

If you would like to become an Official deviantART Beta Tester; make sure you have an active subscription, then visit your Settings page and click the appropriate checkbox in the Official Beta Tester section.

There are two special forums, just for you as a beta tester to discuss and provide feedback on current projects in beta.

Beta Tester Feedback – This forum is the primary interaction point between you and the development team. When a new project is made available to you, the project lead will create a new thread. The development team members are the only deviants allowed to create threads to ensure that the feedback is precise and structured. You can however reply to these threads with any feedback you may have, and we encourage you to.


Beta Tester Discussion – This forum is specifically for you to discuss projects in beta with your fellow testers. It is a free for all. While developers may sometimes join in conversation threads in this area, most of their interaction will occur in the Feedback forum.


Note: We need to make clear that you should not submit feedback reports to the Helpdesk or directly to developers. Feedback submissions of these types will be ignored. All feedback must be kept within the same general location so that all developers may view it and work together to resolve whatever problems you encounter.

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If you go back into your Settings management page, you will be able to deselect the beta tester toggle. This will return you to your previous status.