I'm new in Android Things and was trying to do OTA updates. In Android things console whenever I pushed a new OTA, along with the new app version, it refreshed the image as well. However, I want my image to be the same as earlier and just app to get replaced over the air. Is it possible?.
I have been thinking to use play store to update my app in android things. Can it be done?
Thank you in Advance.
In Android Things, all apps on the system are bundled in an updated OTA image and updated in that way. There's no mechanism for updating individual applications like on Google Play.
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Several users have downloaded my app from Google Play. I now want to provide new features to them. How do I auto-update the app for them without requiring them to re-download the app?
If they have the setting for downloading updates automatically set, just upload a new version of the app with a higher version number in the manifest. The Play Store and Android will do the rest. Of course if they turned off that setting they'll need to do it manually, but that was their decision when they changed the setting.
I now want to provide new features to them.
If you have added new features to your actual app in code, then the single option that you have, so that all users can see the updates is to re-download the app.
If you however want to force the users to get the latest version of your app, please check my answer from the following post:
Force users to have last app version in Android
My work currently released a mobile app (android and iOS). I know we publish say a new apk when there is a new android build. But do users have to download the entire application every time a new apk is available? Or do users just get the differences and download those instead of the entire application again? Trying to understand how updates actually work.
Thanks for any help!
I can't speak for iOS, but Google Play will attempt to push app differences on updates rather than the whole APK file. See this article for more info:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/12/saving-data-reducing-the-size-of-app-updates-by-65-percent.html
I have uploaded my app on google play store. I need when I do an update in my app the old versions of the app doesn't work on user devices until they updated the app. For example when I make an update when the users that have old versions of the app opens it a dialog opens to them asking them to update the app to be able to use it , How can I do that?
You can't go and change old versions retrospectively - the code is already out there on devices.
If you want this feature in new versions of your app however, I would recommend using something like Firebase Remote Config. That will let you control the minimum version of your app on a server, so you could give the users a week to update, then change the config on the server, and the app will know to ask the user to update.
I've got a development partner who says that in order to fix bugs that cause an application on iOS & Android to crash on load that end users need to delete the original app and re-download the new updated version. Are they for real? Shouldn't it just be incorporated into a standard app update and work like any other update?
The answer depends on how your app was distributed. If you just sent out a link like http://www.mysite.com/mytestApp.apk, it's easiest to uninstall. If they're updating via the Google Play Store, you have to set your version number higher than the installed version. Users can then get the newer version more seamlessly. I haven't done an ad hoc distribution with iOS yet, but updates via the app store seem to work similarly to the Play store. Users get a notification and can then update if their device meets the required specs.
Usually an update should resolve these issues. However, I have seen rare instances where users running older apps will need to uninstall/reinstall to get the new version of the application working. Like I said, these are rare instances where some major configuration has to take place. It's not something most updates need to do.
I downloaded the News Republic app and I noticed that in my Android Market account this app is marked for automatic updating.
Does anyone know how I can automatically enable this feature for users who download my application? Thanks!
An application is automatically updated when you republish another apk with a higher version (as specified in AndroidManifest.xml). If you wish to push other resources without republishing, you will have to implement download/install/settings/ yourself.