Development builds / snapshots

The development branch can contain experimental code that is under active development and should not be used for production environments. Snapshot images may support additional hardware; however, it is experimental, considered unstable, and sometimes won't compile.

Prebuilt snapshot images do not come with any web interface or GUI. You will need to be comfortable using a command line and remote shell to install one yourself → See How to install LuCI and Use SSH to connect to the internet and install Luci Web interface

Main differences of buildbot snapshots vs. official stable releases

snapshots do not contain LuCI GUI by default. It needs to be installed by the user.
snapshots are completely untested. Just automatic builds of the most recent source code and packages. Although snapshots are usually ok, they may sometimes contain serious bugs that prevent booting the device correctly or even prevent easy sysupgrading to new versions.
snapshots are built daily, and that sets time limits to installing new packages with opkg. Due to kernel version checksums, you can only install “kmod” kernel modules and other kernel version dependent modules from the exactly same snapshot build. So, a few hours after flashing the firmware you may not be able to install new modules with opkg any more (as the next snapshot has been built into the download repo and has different checksums). See below for package availability time limits.

Expected availability of master snapshot packages

Who	What	Build frequency	Expected availability	Example
Phase 1 images buildbot	kmods	daily	3 months after build	https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/x86/64/kmods/
Phase 1 images buildbot	target specific packages ¹⁾	daily	until next build ²⁾	https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/x86/64/packages/
Phase 2 packages buildbot	normal packages	daily	no specific expiry date	https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/x86_64/

Main benefits of snapshots

newest available version of the main OpenWrt source and every package
support for new devices that have been added since the last stable release branching

Do not use snapshots if...

you absolutely need a GUI and you are not capable of installing LuCI yourself via ssh/commandline
you are completely unexperienced with linux and do not know what ssh is. It will most probably be a hassle for you and all other people involved to pull you through the installation and back to stock firmware.
you think you always need at any time to have the latest bleeding edge software, just because. The problems that can arise (starting by non-availability of LuCI in precompiled snapshot images) might be overwhelming to you and might drive you back to installing stock firmware again.
your expectation is to have a flawless and 100% working compilation, installation and usage of the firmware. Snapshots are experimental, and weird issues of any kind can arise at any time. What does work today, doesn’t necessarily work tomorrow.

Do use snapshots if...

your are experienced with linux and know how to manage unexpected problems of any kind (not booting at all, bootloops, no network connectivity, ...)
there is no other choice, i.e. there is no other stable release available. This may be the case for newly added devices, or devices whose support hasn’t matured enough to be called stable.
stable release suffers from poor performance, and if snapshot is explicitly recommended in the forum due to improved stability, better wifi, or $whatever_problem it solves.
you can live without a GUI, or if you are experienced enough to install LuCI yourself

¹⁾

can also include kmods

²⁾

Possibly no changes, so possibly available longer.