This guide covers three ways to test your in-app experiences: using the Share Link, publishing to a test segment, or previewing with the Chrome Extension.
Generate a public share link
You can preview content or share it with colleagues by turning on the public link. When you preview content using the Share Link, you’re seeing it rendered through the Candu SDK, just like your end-users will. This makes it a reliable way to check layout, design, and content behavior in context.
You can also switch between desktop, tablet, and mobile viewports, and manually select different segments to see how your content appears for each audience.
📌 One limitation to keep in mind: The Share Link won’t support actions that take you out of the page, such as navigation to external URLs or jumping between pieces of Candu content. Those require a live environment to work correctly and you can publish to a test segment in your production environment to safely test that behavior.
To get started, find the Share button on the top right corner of the editor.
Set the permissions to “can view” from the dropdown
Click Copy Link
Publish on your page to a test segment
This option is only available if your app sends user traits to Candu. To preview content live without affecting real users, create a segment just for yourself or your team such as “Only Me” or “Internal Only”.
Go to Segments
Click Create Segment and give it a name
Set conditions like User ID is one of, or use other identifiers such as email or domain Note: Available traits or properties depend on the user data your organization sends to Candu.
Then retarget your content:
Open your content
In the Everyone tab, click on the three-dot menu
Click Retarget
Choose your test segment and click Retarget Content
Click Publish
And that’s it! Content will only be published to your test segment.
Before testing in your app
Confirm the workspace and environment, the exact content and variant, and the user you will test with. Use a dedicated test audience and review which other variants or audiences are already published before changing targeting. Check the layout at the device sizes your users need, then test navigation and triggered content in the live environment: a Share Link preview cannot verify every cross-content interaction.
For content opened by a Candu button, follow How to Trigger Content from CTAs and Events. For a zero segment count, follow the zero active users checks rather than treating the count as a delivery test.
Using the Chrome Extension to Preview Content
The Chrome Extension lets you quickly place and preview inline and overlay content directly in your product. It’s an easy way to test how content will look and behave in context before publishing it.
After installing the extension, go to the page in your product where you want the content to show. Then:
Open the Chrome Extension.
Click All content.
Use the dropdown to select your Candu workspace.
Search for the content you want to preview. This should match your product's environment (Production, Staging, etc).
Select the content.
Click the Placement card.
You’ll see a purple frame appear around the Candu content on your page.
Placement Settings
Within the Placement view, you can:
Change the selector to target a different element. When you move your cursor through the selectors on the page, you’ll see a turquoise dotting line highlighting positions on the page.
Adjust the content’s position.
Add or edit URL rules.
Update or remove the placement.
📌 You can collapse the Chrome Extension and hide the borders to get a real preview of how the content looks within your product.
View as a Specific Segment
Use the honeycomb icon to preview content as a specific segment. This helps you inspect the content for that audience. To verify that a real user qualifies, also check their actual traits and events against the segment rules and test as that user in your app.
Return to the Editor
To make edits to the content, click Open in Editor. This will take you back to the Candu editor.
📌 You can press the ESC key or click on Remove Content to exit out of the preview selector mode.
Need more help? Reach out to us via chat or email us at [email protected].