shipthis

ShipThis is a command line tool for building and uploading your Godot mobile games to the Apple App Store and Google Play.

ShipThis compiles your game on managed cloud servers. You do not need Xcode, Android Studio, or SDK installations. You can run it manually or from CI.

[!IMPORTANT] ShipThis is in open beta. While in beta, it is completely free to use.

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Why use ShipThis?

• Always a free tier - Enough build minutes for most solo devs
• One-command setup - Use the interactive wizard to configure your game
• No additional tools - No Xcode, Android Studio, or SDK installation required
• Simplified provisioning - We handle iOS certificates, Android keystores, app signing, and API keys
• One-command deployment - Publish to TestFlight or Google Play with a single command

Quick start

Requirements

• A Godot 3.6 or 4.X game
• Node.js version 18.0 or above
• To publish an Android game - a Play Console developer account (not required for building an APK/AAB)
• To build an iOS game - an Apple Developer account

1. Install ShipThis

ShipThis can be installed as a package via the NPM package manager. Run the following at the command line:

npm install -g shipthis

2. Create an account

Set up an account with ShipThis by logging in for the first time using the shipthis login command.

🛠 All builds run on managed cloud servers - no need to install Xcode or Android Studio locally.

shipthis login

3. Set up your game

Run the wizard command to configure your game on ShipThis. The command takes a platform parameter - this can be either android or ios. Run this command from within a Godot game directory (with a project.godot file):

Set up an Android game

shipthis game wizard android

Watch: Set up ShipThis for Android

Set up an iOS game

shipthis game wizard ios

Watch: Set up ShipThis for iOS

4. Ship

Now you can publish new versions of your game to TestFlight or Google Play with the shipthis game ship command:

shipthis game ship

• Having issues? Check the Troubleshooting or join our Discord
• For detailed documentation, visit shipth.is/docs

FAQ

Can I build my game as APK without a Google Play account?

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Yes.

Running the wizard command will create a Service Account Key for automatic publishing, you might not need this when initially building your game.

You can run the steps below to create a ShipThis account, create the game, create a keystore, and then run the ship command. Later, when you need to setup publishing you can re-run the wizard command.

# Create or login to your shipthis account (OTP based login)
shipthis login --email [e-mail]

# Create a ShipThis game - run this in a dir with a project.godot file
shipthis game create --name "My Game" --androidPackageName "com.my.game"

# Create a keystore for signing the APK
shipthis game android keyStore create

# Run the build, skip the publish step, and download as game.apk
shipthis game ship --follow --platform android --skipPublish --downloadAPK game.apk

Do I need a Mac to build for iOS?

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No, you do not need a Mac, but you will need an Apple Developer Account.

ShipThis handles iOS builds on managed macOS cloud servers. The command-line tool communicates with the Apple Developer Portal to configure everything on your behalf.

Which versions of Godot are supported?

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We support all stable Godot versions since 3.6, including:

3.6	4.0	4.1	4.2	4.3	4.4
3.6.1	4.0.1	4.1.1	4.2.1		4.4.1
	4.0.2	4.1.2	4.2.2
	4.0.3	4.1.3
	4.0.4	4.1.4

You can read more in our Godot versioning guide.

Do I need to create an export_presets.cfg file?

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No, the ShipThis build server will generate a valid export_presets.cfg for your game.

If you provide an export_presets.cfg file, the desired preset values will be merged with the generated file.

How much does it cost to use ShipThis?

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ShipThis is currently in open-beta as so it is completely free to use. You can see our planned pricing on the pricing page.

📖 Command Reference

🗂 Topics

• apple – Commands that relate to linking your ShipThis account with your Apple Developer Account
• game – Commands that relate to configuring the specific game in the current working directory.

🔧 Commands

• dashboard – Opens the web browser to your shipth.is dashboard
• login – Sign in or create a new account
• status – Display your overall ShipThis account status
• help – Display help for a specific topic or command

🌍 Community

• 💬 Join us on Discord
• 🐛 Report an issue
• 📣 Feature ideas? Feedback? We’d love to hear from you – email [e-mail]