I'm publishing an app through Play Store. The app is developed using Expo.
Currently, the production version has internal version code of 4, version name of "1.0.3" and the app has been updated 7th of August.
I recently made some fixes to the app and then built an app bundle with internal version code of 5 and version name of "1.0.4". I published that version to closed testing via the alpha track. Now, clients with no access to the alpha track are getting the alpha version, while the product page in Play Store still shows that the app was last updated 7th of August and has version name of "1.0.3".
What is happening here? Some sort of misunderstanding on my side regarding use of version codes?
Okay, I found out what is causing this. Seems that I didn't read expo documentation carefully enough.
I have been building the releases with command expo build:android -t app-bundle, which, as documented here, also publishes the updates as an OTA update:
Please note: When you run expo build, Expo automatically publishes
your app (with expo publish). In order to avoid accidentally
publishing changes to your production app, you may want to use release
channels.
Since I didn't specify a release channel when building the app bundle, the updates were published to the default release channel.
Related
Noticed this very strange behavior with my android application
Installed app from play store with version name 3.1 App is working
fine.
Due to new correction,I've installed App via USB connection or by
sharing apk files with same version name.
App is working fine with newly added features but
After certain time/days i found that the newly added feature is
gone and I'm using the play store version...
Additional info:
The same issue occurred in android version 11,12,9 followed by the above process.
However, I have no idea why would it is happening and how to prevent this behavior.
visited this below link for the similar issue and found nothing related to my issue.
Why does Android app rolls back to a previous version after device shutdown?
My guessing is your play store has a function that called update automatically which is opend,your apk on Phone is version behind the play store version
Found the solution for this Silly Issue.
from last one month i observed that my release apk which is not in production but has the same version name was auto updated to production version i it is for all the apk user.
I tried to disable the of google play store setting of auto update and after few day is not replaced by the production version.
:)
The situation
An app is released to Google Play as apk. First release back in 2018, several apk updates since. Now as is required from Google (pr. August / November 2021), the format needs to be app-bundle instead of apk when updating the app.
I successfully build the app-bundle and uploaded to Google Play Console. I released the build on 'internal test' track. All seems to be just fine.
The problem
However, no matter what I do, I keep seeing and downloading the latest apk-version instead of the new app-bundle version.
The latest apk version-code is "400126/200126" (x64/x86).
The latest app-bundle version-code is "131".
I first thought it could be a problem that 131 < 400126 (obviously), so I created a new release on the 'internal test' track without any artifact - in the hope that could sort of 'reset' the state - and then creating a new release with the "131" app-bundle again. However no luck in getting the app-bundle version on my devices.
Besides I tried these things with no luck
Unsubscribing and re-subscribing the 'internal track' a dozens of times.
Removed and re-added my Google-id email from the set of 'testers' on Google Play a dozens of times.
Cleared the Google Play cache on my devices.
Installing from Web a dozens of times. Always ending up getting the latest apk-version installed. But actually, when entering my App on Google Play Web, it still shows the latest apk-version, even though it tells me (correctly) that this is a beta-version (indicating that I, indeed, is registered as internal tester). This, at least, is consistent with the fact that I keep download and finding only the latest apk in Google Play app on my phone-device, and not the app-bundle.
BUT! How do I get my new app-bundle available on the 'internal test'? All suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks!
I ended up creating a ticket at Google Support. They quickly replied that I simply needed to increase the build-number to > 400126. That makes a lot of sense.
However, we had another app where this was not needed - but that might be because the app had not yet been promoted to production at the time?
A few weeks ago, I've changed an App from internal testing to open testing on Google play. Lets call it build 20. Since then a few updates have been published and now the current version is build 27.
Yesterday I've noticed that if you download the app from Google Play, you'll get build 20 installed. The question now is: How can you ensure that Google Play delivers the most recent version when installing the app? Is there a way to force it?
A workaround to get the latest version is to visit the "My apps and games" section at the play store app, where the just freshly installed app shows up under available updates. Pushing the "update" button installs the app's latest version (build 27). However, it would be nice if the Play store would deliver the most recent version during initial installation. Do you have any ideas how to make this happen?
When you change from the Internal or Open testing stage to the Production stage, make sure that Staged roll-out is 100%
Of course, it takes several hours to distribute all new users or existing users
I have a production app on the Google Play store. I have also released a beta version to a limited group using the Google Play beta feature. However, if I make changes to the production app, I then need to re-build and re-release the beta app because it gets overwritten by the new production version. This is very frustrating when I want to make some bug fixes on production without changing the beta. Is there any way to release a new production app without invalidating the current beta?
The basic problem is that Google Play updates based on build number (versionCode), and doesn't care which channel the .apk comes from.
Your only option is to not pickup sequential build numbers, but instead leave gaps. For example if your prod is versionCode="10", make the beta build versionCode="20" which will give you the chance to publish nine more minor prod releases before you hit the issue of invalidating the beta build.
Though there are two problems with this approach:
- Obviously it does not scale very well.
- It makes it hard to manage the build numbers, as now you have to keep a record of what build has reached which build number.
- If you don't invalidate the beta build, your beta users will still have the bugs you just fixed in the new prod build until you upgrade them.
Note that if you don't have permission changes that prevent auto-upgrade, invalidating the beta build and publishing a new one is not that much of an issue; most users won't even notice that they were upgraded (unless your app tells them explicitly).
I believe the reason google requires that your new production version of the application override the beta is due to the basic development cycle. Typically applications start in the Alpha stage, then beta, and finally end in production.
The beta version is overwritten due to the fact that the next logical step in the cycle from beta is release. When you re-submit the beta version, it would be the current code revision as the production version, alongside bug fixes that are being tested.
The scheme is very simple:
Google Play uses versionCode to indicate the apk currently available to a user. It doesn't matter if it is a production or a beta release. Also it is not allowed to upload a build with versionCode lower than it was in some previous build.
So in your case you need to upload a production version and then upload a beta release (even if its only change is versionCode). Occasionally some of your beta users may download a production release, but they will get the beta release a bit later anyway.
I already had a version (versioncode=2) in Google Store. Yesterday after doing some changes, when I tried publishing the app, i am getting below error message and not able to publish the updates. Any idea how can I fix it?
This configuration cannot be published for the following reason(s):
Version 2 is not served to any device configuration: all devices that might receive version 2 would receive version 3.
Some devices are eligible to run multiple APKs. In such a scenario, the device will receive the APK with the higher version code.
FYI, the new version is versioncode=3
You need to "Deactivate" the current apk in order to actually publish the new apk.
Deactivate the 2 version on the Google Play.
All this says is that version 3 is applicable for all devices that version 2 is applicable for. This means version 2 is obsolete.
If you check closely, when you upload your APK there is no option to Publish to production, only Save as Draft. This happened to me last night and drove me crazy. Now, in the morning I uploaded the new APK again and the Publish to production button was there! I don't what caused this issue but now it's fine.