In a dark launch, you roll out a feature/change to production but only a small subset of your users will actually be silently exposed to the new feature/change.
- It’s called ‘dark’ launching because users are typically not aware of the change.
- It’s a bit like canarying. You start with having the feature/change affect only 1% of your end users, then 5%, then 10%, then 100%,. for example.
- In some cases, you can allow your users to explicitly opt out of a new feature.