Release notes

The following features are available in our latest major release.

New and improved LaunchDarkly UX and multi-environment view

The new experience is in early preview for everyone

We're excited to introduce a clean new product navigation and multi-environment view to improve the app experience. Our new navigation has clear categories for commonly used features as well as an updated project switcher that will keep track of your recent activity. With the new navigation, you'll be able to access the resources you need more quickly and efficiently.

With the multi-environment view, you can pick the environments you use and reorder them to match your release path, keeping them just one click away across LaunchDarkly. Get full visibility into your flag's status across environments to ensure you never miss a step. We’ve refreshed the existing "Saved Dashboards" feature into a new option that allows you to save any filtered view across LaunchDarkly as a shortcut you can access later from the main navigation.

We've also introduced the ability to view contextual change history across the app for every kind of resource. The new change history also adds support for viewing the history of resources that previously weren't supported, like experiments.

Get started:

• To get started in the new experience, log in to your account.

Release Assistant with automation

Release Assistant is available for all Enterprise customers

Release Assistant simplifies the complex orchestration of releasing, and acts as a way to standardize the "last mile" of feature delivery. In May 2024, we're introducing the ability to use automation in release pipelines in order to make it easier to provide visibility, safety, and consistency when delivering new features.

The new Release Assistant with automation includes:

• Apply best practices to releases at scale: Leaders gain peace of mind in automating and standardizing efficient release practices.
• Use guided paths to release with less effort: With defined pipelines, developers can do the next right thing with more confidence and less ad-hoc coordination.
• More visibility into release statuses: Increased visibility into all releases decreases friction for teams coordinating with multiple release workstreams.

Get started:

• Create a release pipeline
• Read the documentation

Release Guardian

Release Guardian is available for everyone by request

Introducing Release Guardian for regression detection and automated incident response at the feature level. Connect critical metrics to your release process, so that every change is monitored—even the smallest releases, where issues would previously have been obscured by noise in the wider system metrics. When Release Guardian detects regressions, get alerted or automatically roll back the feature flag change that caused the issue, so you can measure and protect every release. Our metrics integrate with popular observability tools such as OpenTelemetry, Sentry, and more.

With Release Guardian you can:

• De-risk releases: Ensure that critical metrics are monitored on every release with connected events via LaunchDarkly APIs, SDKs, and Sentry.
• Accelerate time to resolution: Automatically alert on and roll back changes that negatively affect metrics with flag-specific monitoring.
• Minimize the blast radius: Identify the specific flag configuration change before it degrades overall performance and receive notifications of automatic change conversions.

Get started:

• To request access, contact your LaunchDarkly account representative
• Read the documentation

Advanced Experimentation

These features are available for everyone who uses Experimentation

Use metrics and Experimentation to measure the impact of every feature. Our new metric and experiment tools prevent problematic code from being released and negatively impacting your applications and customers. With Experimentation you can:

• Measure the impact of every feature: Identify, create, and verify key metrics aligned with your business objectives to effectively track the impact of every feature.
• Experiment with statistical rigor: Enhance your Experimentation approach and confidently run sophisticated experiments that deliver trustworthy outcomes.
• Expedite business results: Identify the specific flag configuration change before it degrades overall performance and be notified with automatic change reversions.

Get started:

• Use Experimentation
• Read the documentation

The LaunchDarkly Quickstart

The LaunchDarkly Quickstart is available for everyone

Onboard new team members in less than five minutes with the new LaunchDarkly Quickstart! The new Quickstart walks you through setting up LaunchDarkly from inviting a new member, setting up an SDK, configuring a flag, and receiving a flag evaluation in record time.

Get started:

• Use the Quickstart
• Read the documentation

The LaunchDarkly CLI

The LaunchDarkly CLI is available for everyone

The LaunchDarkly Command Line Interface (CLI) lets you stay in your flow state and manage feature flags directly from within your development environment. Plus, it includes a specific getting started experience, which guides you from SDK installation through to successfully evaluating your first feature flag—all from your command line.

Get started:

• Use the CLI
• Read the documentation

LaunchDarkly extension for GitHub Copilot

The LaunchDarkly extension for GitHub Copilot on Visual Studio Marketplace provides GitHub Copilot functionality for managing the lifecycle of a feature flag from within Visual Studio Code (VSCode).

Get started:

• Read the documentation

The following features are available in our latest major release. Learn even more in our Galaxy 2023 product release blog.

Release Assistant

Release Assistant is available for everyone

Now engineers can focus on writing code without worrying about the release process. With Release Assistant, you can use flags and environment changes to seamlessly move releases through different phases of readiness. Incorporate your best practices into releases as reusable defaults. The releases view shows you guardrail metrics and quality signals, so you can view all in-progress releases in one place.

Get started:

Navigate to Account Settings and click into the Projects tab. Choose a project, click on the Release pipelines tab, and click "Create release pipeline."

Want to learn more?

• Create a release pipeline
• Read the documentation

Funnel Experiments

Funnel Experiments are available for everyone who uses Experimentation

Now you can use Experimentation to design experiments that measure business-critical user flows and provide results specific to those product funnels. New metric groups let you measure multi-step user journeys. Use our new experiment builder to create the workflow that makes sense for you, and determine whether you’re getting the conversions that you want with all your metrics visible in one place.

Get started:

To start a funnel optimization experiment, create metrics and a funnel metric group to use in a new experiment.

Want to learn more?

• Experimentation users: Create a funnel optimization experiment
• Read the documentation

Mobile Lifecycle Assistant

Mobile Lifecycle Assistant is available for everyone, and partially enabled for Federal customers

LaunchDarkly now supports all stages of the mobile app version lifecycle. Use our new automatic environment attributes feature to streamline adoption and enable mobile feature flagging capabilities right out of the box. Use our new mobile targeting experience to directly target specific device cohorts as needed. Use our new "applications" concept to gracefully deprecate unsupported app versions.

Federal customers can use some of these features, but cannot target based on supported or unsupported status, and do not have applications automatically created.

Get started:

To start using mobile releases, enable the automatic environment attributes feature in your mobile SDKs.

Want to learn more?

• Read the documentation on applications
• Read the documentation for your SDK

Segment Builder

Segment Builder is available for everyone who uses segments

Now you can target directly on user segments with data from your favorite sources, including new integrations to connect to LaunchDarkly from Census, Heap, Hightouch, Rudderstack, Twilio Segment, and more. Manage your audiences and their experiences in one place, ensuring consistent targeting at scale.

Get started:

To target a user segment, navigate to the Targeting tab of your feature flag and click Target segments.

To create a new user segment synced from an external tool, click Create, choose Segment, then choose Sync data from external sources. Synced segments are available to customers on an Enterprise plan.

Want to learn more?

• Try it out
• Read the documentation on targeting with segments
• Read the documentation on creating synced segments

Migration Assistant

Migration Assistant is in Early Access and available to everyone

Now you can manage complex tech migrations with increased confidence and ease. A new custom flag type supports multi-stage technology migrations, whether they’re as simple as two stages or as complex as six. Automatically track consistency, latency, and error rates, with alerts for unexpected behavior between each stage. Detailed rollout and configuration options mean our migration lifecycle shepherds you through each phase of a migration, stress-free.

Get started:

Create a new flag and choose the "migration" flag type.

Want to learn more?

• Read the documentation
• Read a best practices guide
• Read the documentation for your SDK

Engineering insights hub

Engineering insights hub is now available for Early Access Program members

Visualize LaunchDarkly’s impact on software velocity and quality metrics, with minimal setup. Use the engineering insights hub to understand your code’s performance at a glance by viewing new information including deployment failure rates, how experiments inform flag changes, and the impact of your changes over time. The engineering insights hub surfaces top-level metrics for your projects in one place and compare performance across your projects. Assess your code's readiness for release with the release maturity score, a top-level number derived in real time from your data. Use this information to develop strategies to understand the impact of your code changes and improve your delivery metrics over time.

Get started:

To use the engineering insights hub, click on Engineering insights in the left nav.

Want to learn more?

• Join the EAP
• Read the documentation

Release Guardian

The wait list is open for Release Guardian's Early Access Program

Introducing Release Guardian: regression detection and automated incident response at the feature level. Connect critical metrics to your release process, so that every change is monitored - even the smallest releases, where issues would previously have been obscured by noise in the wider system metrics. When regressions are detected, get alerted or automatically roll back the feature flag change that caused the issue, so you can measure and protect every release.

Get started:

• Join the Early Access Program wait list
• Read the documentation