Deploying a Kivy app to Google Play Store is a true pain. I spent over a week now trying to deploying the app to the Play Store, whereas I spent only 5 days developing it.
After managing to overcome all problems during the build process with buildozer, I'm facing now another problem when I want to deploy my app to google store. This is the warning I'm getting:
Unoptimised APK
Warning:
This APK results in unused code and resources being sent to users. Your app could be smaller if you used the Android App Bundle. By not optimising your app for device configurations, your app is larger to download and install on users' devices than it needs to be. Larger apps see lower installation success rates and take up storage on users' devices.
Resolution:
Use the Android App Bundle to automatically optimise for device configurations, or manage it yourself with multiple APKs.
I know It's just a warning, I can ignore it right? I thought so too, but google store is not allowing me to deploy my app. So I must somehow solve this issue so that I can finally deploy my app in peace.
Here are the steps I'm making to build my app:
I followed all these steps (signed the app with key etc...)
I even tried using jarsigner as an extra step since the steps above didn't work
I also tried using zipalign to "optimize" my app
But none of that worked. Still google store is saying I need to make a bundle android app. But I'm using kivy/python so I can't use android studio to make a bundle and I can't find in buildozer docs how I can do this or if it is supported.
My app size is 28 MB, I even tried to remove some necessary stuff just to see whether it will work. So I reduced the size to 14 MB but that didn't work either. It's really frustrating. Building apps is fun while coding but the deployment process is real headache.
Here is a link to my app in case you want to play with the code or see the buildozer.spec file. I lost hope of uploading it to Play Store, hence I open sourced it.
Edit
here is how the google play console looks in my case:
This is the first tab, where I upload the app:
This is the second tab, where I should review and then release (notice here that I can't press the roll out to production button):
As you guessed, the message you're seeing about using AAB is just a warning, it doesn't prevent you from releasing the app. You're far from the first person to be confused by it though, the google interface is quite unclear.
The actual problem is that you need to make sure all the essential information is filled in on every page of the app store configuration. In your screenshot above, pages that have been completed are marked by a green circle with a check mark. In contrast, the "Store Listing" page only has a greyed-out check mark, indicating that you need to add something there before you can release the APK.
As discussed in comments, it turned out that the missing thing was screenshots of the app, and after adding them it could be released successfully despite the warning message.
Related
We have had our app published to Play Store for a very long time. but recently we got this issue in Android 12.
Image showing Google Play Console
There are two types of APK in Play Console
Original File
Distribution APK
this problem is happening in the distribution app
I checked the logcat with adb but it's only showing WINDEATH and there is no other crash
I have checked all over Google and StackOverflow but there is no such question asked that I came across
After opening the app it's showing it like this
App Crash Screenshot
Also, we are using Firebase but there is nothing captured related to this
Use a crash reporting service such as Firebase
or Sentry.io.
These will help you log the crash, get some data about when it happened, why it happened etc. Flutter apps are not meant to crash, so check out your interactions with 3rd party plugins that are initiated on app start. Also, check your signing keys, maybe there is a mismatch between the debug ones and the production ones.
Good luck!
following warning showing me . what is the reason how can solve it please help me. what we missed at the time of publishing app
Unoptimized APK
Warning:
This APK results in unused code and resources being sent to users. Your app could be smaller if you used the Android App Bundle. By not optimizing your app for device configurations, your app is larger to download and install on users' devices than it needs to be. Larger apps see lower install success rates and take up storage on users' devices.
Resolution:
Use the Android App Bundle to automatically optimize for device configurations, or manage it yourself with multiple APKs.
Google requires apps to be build/delivered as Android App Bundle (AAB). You can use APK for testing, but not for releasing to the Play Store anymore.
https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle
So, I am trying to upload my first app in the Play Store.
I didn't opt for Google Play App Signing option but I still get the following warning when reviewing my app's release:
Unoptimized APK
Warning:
This APK results in unused code and resources being sent to users. Your app could be smaller if you used the Android App Bundle. By not optimizing your app for device configurations, your app is larger to download and install on users' devices than it needs to be. Larger apps see lower install success rates and take up storage on users' devices.
Resolution:
Use the Android App Bundle to automatically optimize for device configurations, or manage it yourself with multiple APKs.
I don't want to use the Android App Bundle so...
I tried to upload 2 different APKs with the same Version Code, I
receive an error as such I can't upload same Version Code APKs.
I uploaded 2 different APKs with different Version Code, I receive a warning as such the APKs with the oldest version codes will be omitted.
So, how the heck should I make this work out. LOL??
Thanks for any advise,
The warning can be ignored. So as long as you don't see any error in red, you can create a release. However, you will need to fill out all required infos for the play store page and your app content first.
I found it quite confusing since on the "releases" page, you don't see any indication that the store page must be filled out first. If you filled out all the information, you will see a checkmark next to this entries in the play console:
This post relates to a rapidly changing event.
I signed the app bundle with a generated key using the android studio developer built in tool. I also opted into google play key signing. When I upload the app bundle to the release, it says
"Google Play is generating and optimizing APKs from your Android App Bundle. This may take a few minutes, depending on the size of your app bundle."
But this goes on forever. My bundle is only around 2 MB. Is this normal?
This happened to me and made me stuck for several hours. Finally got the solution,
Make sure the Date and time of your computer is correct at the time of generating the signed APK or app Bundle.
Basically it causes the the certificate to get rejected by Google server, and due to some kind of bug on Google side, the error is not reported to user when user upload App bundles (AAB), but it report back error in case of APK upload
There seem to be an issue on google's side and it seems to be fixed now
I have seen these same symptoms with a different cause, which is what brought me to this question, so I'm offering another potential cause and answer, for others who encounter the situation I did.
That is, I uploaded an APK and when it reached 100% it said "processing..." and stayed in that status forever.
I researched and found this answer, but in my case it was not a temporary problem. Another user mentioned that he had determined that this also happens when posting a 64-bit APK for a release before a 32-bit APK version. Posting the 32-bit APK first works, but when I post a 64-bit APK first, it sits "processing..." forever.
Change your internet connection. I have the same problem too, I've tried using mobile data, wifi in my home but still have the same problem. And then I'm using wifi at my campus, it's so fast and finally I can upload my app bundle without stuck at processing status.
This happened to me now and it was showing "uploading" for about 15 minutes on my fibre connection, So I reloaded the page and uploaded again. It just took seconds to upload that time. So try reloading the page and trying again.
What are the things to do for posting an app to the Android market when posting their first app to the market?
Most of it is explained in official docs, I'll add some points from experience:
Create your key store for App signing. Make sure you put some relevant info in your certificate if your App has copyright. keep a backup and guard it in every possible way, play store only accepts apk updates signed with same key as the original one, so does the device when installing an update.
Finalize your package name, make it unique , in future if you lose the signing key, you will have to re-upload app under a different package name.
Make a thorough review of code, watch out for test code, notes, useless comments and unwanted logging traces you might have placed there. Check your TODO items, run a code inspection from your IDE, remove any critical issues if found. Clear useless jar files, and resources. Also consider externalizing hard-coded strings to xml, so that you can add translations later on.
Check and validate manifest file, update version name and version code. Version name is shown when your app is listed in play store. Version code is incremented whenever you upload updated apk to play store. If its a major release you can bump up version name too.
Finally, build your apk in release mode, and optionally run pro-guard. If your app uses plain vanilla android API and no fancy external libraries such as RoboGuice etc, proguard will run fine. Other wise you will have to tell proguard to ignore classes under those packages. Proguard is optional, you can upload app without using it. Some IDE's have a nice GUI to do this.
Sign your apk with the key you created. Install it on test device, do a test run. Additionally, use emulator to test it across android versions. Take some screen shots, maybe a video too.
Prepare publishing material, write down few lines about your app, a list of features and any additional notes. Also, create a 512x512 icon image for your app.
If you have a website about your App, great, else make ready a valid mail id as a developer contact point.
Log in to developer console, upload apk file, fill in relevant screen shots, description, contact details etc etc. Save and publish. It can take anywhere between 2 to even 9-10 hours for your app to be visible in play store listings.
Your app url will be like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.example.myapp. Keep an eye on statistics, put keywords along with app name like "muzo - music player" , most people don't know "muzo" they usually search for "music player". Have your app reviewed, links pointing to your app improve its search ranking.
There is an excelent topic in the android documentation talking about how to prepare your app for release. The procedure is the same for your 1st or you 1000st published app.
Please see here: http://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/preparing.html
PS: And a +1 for you, interesting question.