Submitting webview of own application on playstore - android

I have a website and it is responsive to small devices also, so I wanted to publish its webview but google play store is rejecting the application by saying - "We don’t allow apps whose primary purpose is to provide a webview of a website, regardless of ownership, or to aggregate content that does not belong to the developer. To resolve this issue, please remove violating content and resubmit your app."
But I am the owner of website whose webview is used, additionally in this app push notification, QR code scanner and Geolocation functionalites are also there.
I raise the query in play store-developer but still every time they say the same thing, how to prove them that I am the owner of website whose webview is used in application.
Please someone help me, I am searching for solution on internet form last 7 days.
I also asked them how can I prove that I am the owner but they are repeating the same lines i.e - "Families Policy Requirements: We don’t allow apps whose primary purpose is to provide a webview of a website, regardless of ownership"
Please someone tell me how to prove them that I am the owner of website and please let my app get published.

Maybe you can try this. First verify your website ownership through google search console. There are two methods to verify, using dns or using url prefix. The easiest is using url prefix. Download the html file from google and upload it to your website, then use verify button.

Related

Having a deeplink automatically direct to the Google Play Store or Apple App store depending on the device type

We will be sending, via SMS, a link to some of our clients that links them to the Google Playstore or Appstore to download our app.
If the user already has our app installed, the link prompts a "Open with ABC app?" message when clicked.
We want to use a single link, meaning it should somehow automatically pick up device type. Meaning if the user doesn't have our app installed, it appropriately redirects them to the app or playstore.
Our devs are insisting that using a single link is impossible, just trying to make sure this is really the case as I don't recall a lot of apps sending 2 separate links to download from.
Our devs are insisting that using a single link is impossible
I think your devs are trying to avoid work :P
https://firebase.google.com/docs/dynamic-links

[iOS][Android] AppStore and publication: can the publication be rejected because of a webview?

I'm a mobile developer and I have a client that own an hairdressing business. He had a mobile app that allowed to schedule appointments, but this app is no longer maintained. Since some months, he shared an URL that allow customers to schedule appointments.
He would like to create a new mobile app that will contain basic informations and a web view that will use the URL dedicated to the appointments.
I think it could be something like this:
1 tab for a the business presentation (address, phone number, map, ...)
1 tab for news (holidays, ...)
1 tab for their offers
1 tab that will contain the webview
I don't know if this could be a problem for Apple or Google regarding the Store publication?
I am more of an Android developer so I can answer regarding Android :) Google doesn't have any restriction if you use just web views within the application, you just need to ensure you have SSL certificate pinning & clear text traffic restricted enabled else there are chancels of getting rejected.
For Apple, I think they would reject if you just use webviews but I am not absolutely sure about that.
Apple give you all the app store review guidelines. A quick google will give you the answer: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
4.2 Minimum Functionality
Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store.
So no, apple will not allow an app that simply wraps a website. There also isn't any value in all the effort needed to build this, because users can just access the same content on a browser.
Google play store doesn't have any such restrictions.

cordova detect if app was downloaded from Google Play

I'm making a Cordova 4.0 Android app that will be sold in Google Play, and I would like to prevent illegal use of it (for example preventing someone to extract the APK from the system and re-distributing it).
One theoretical way of doing this would be by checking that when the app is launched by the user, he did actually download it from Google Play (versus being it sideloaded). I'm not even sure if this is possible or if there's an alternate way of doing something like this.
One way that works in other cases is to use require some sort of login when accessing the app, but in this case I can't do that. Any advice would be appreciated!
Google offers a way to implement validation / licensing:
http://developer.android.com/google/play/licensing/index.html
Take a look if this is what you need!
One suggestion would be for those apps which are get connected to a server to fetch some data.
App verification token
Generate an encoded 64-bit long token and store on both device & server as well. This will be a unique token per app
Whenever app tries to connect to server, it sends the device token details. Server needs to verify it before fulfilling its request.
On specific events, server can generate a new token for a device.
Same way, device token can be mapped to a user or an app on the server side.
Token could carry some app related information, for instance.
first 4 or 6 digits represent app size
second block of digits could represent user specific or device or some other details
Or another block could hold app contents modification date
In case of any change, server could verify the app size, last app contents modification dates, etc.
Generally it is recommended to uglify, obfuscate and minimize app resources before submission.
You can use the package manager class to determine the source of an app (only google or amazon currently detected)
You can similarly use google analytics which gives same information.
This is pretty neat since Android stores the source of every package, allowing apps to know where they came from, to prevent piracy and sideloading.
Great if you always publish to google or amazon. Useless if you sideload your app.

Restrict unauthorized users from downloading the apk in Google Play?

I am planning to drop my app in Google Play(earlier Android Market) because of push notifications (whenever a new version) , security for apk and so on.And also since apk is secured with Google play(paid apks) i dropped of downloading the apk from my website (only authenticated people can download the apk)
Actually its a business app for particular users with username and login access. Everything was fine in the App with login and security mechanisms
I am thinking of a way to restrict the other users who are not from the list while installing itself.
My question is whether any kind of filter or authentication mechanism can we set while downloading the application from the Google play it should ask for a password or something like this to filter the unauthorized users to download the app..
My ultimate aim is i don't want the peoples to try it after downloading unnecessarily
Can anybody help who have tried all those in android market
Ok.. One thing after another..
Google propose their licensing mechanism. However app would need internet connection, which is disadvantage if otherwise it doesn't need it. If I got it right your does need to connect to server so this is not a problem for u.. It seems to me you are already familiar with this method.
Mechanism for password protecting downloading or visibility of apps on Google Play doesn't exist today..
You can identify users with IMEI (in case you don't consider using app on tablets, which doesn't have it), WLAN MAC, BT MAC address or some exotic combination of these methods, and you use this as authentication.
The best solution, from my point of view, is to allow people on market to download it. Your application is already using some mechanism of authentication (user/password) to server. So if 1st thing user need to do is login, and any functionality is disabled if that doesn't pass. If it pass, you already know who is your user and what privileges he has.
The thing is here that I am not so sure what are your concerns when user without login/pass download application if everything after that screen is disabled before authentication. User will download (if they find it..), they will install, try to use it, see that's not possible without credentials and uninstall it.
Hope it helped.. I will try to add few more links in a while..

How to obtain information about downloads, total installation, and active installation from my published android applications programmatically?

I have a few questions regarding android market(Google play). How can I list my published application by accessing from my google account? What I have done so far is using my application package name as a query string to search my application and display all information which I used android market api to do it. Is there another better way to display all my published or installed applications by accessing from my google accounts?
My second question is about detecting number of downloading and installations of my published application. I have found only google analytics so far(for free) which I need to embedded some codes to monitoring my application. Is it possible for me to access those information from android market publish page . I have found that publish page contains information that I need.
Edited: For second question, I would like to obtain statistical information without adding any new code to my application. Is it possible to provide only google account to grant the permission to get those information?
My application is published. If I am using google analytics to monitoring my application do I need to start my counting from zero?
Sorry for my English and my little knowledge about this.
Thanks in advance..
Edited: .. I have found an application, called "analytics" that is what exactly I want to do. But I still cannot figure it out how it works..
The only place you will find this kind of information is on your Developer page. That said, if I were wanting to do what you are, I would put up an app on App Engine that either parsed my Dev page on request, or on a schedule. I mention App Engine as personal preference here, you could obviously use anywhere you can host scripts on.
You can then do what you like with the data you have collected, and your app can request this from your site. Assuming you have no qualms with publicising these numbers, you wouldn't need to scare users by authenticating, and would just need a plain html request.
Edit:
In your language of choice, you would need to request your developer page (the one that lists apps and their install count) and would also need to authenticate as yourself to get it. It's for this reason I would use your own hosting if you can. I can't be more specific than this, as I don't know what language you're most likely to be using. It should be trivial to find out how to do an html request and step through the page in whatever language it is though. App Engine pages are written in Java or Python and deployed to the server, while other obvious options are PHP or Perl. On my own server I would most likely use Perl as it's ideal for ripping up html with regexps.

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