I am new to firebase and android development, therefore, I have not totally understood how it works. I want to know if after adding project to firebase, does it mean the app is launched and will be accessible by anyone who have android or how do I tell someone to try the app when it has not been uploaded to playstore?
You are misunderstanding Firebase with Play store console. Firebase is a BaaS (backend-as-a-Service). In simple language Firebase is platform which allow to build web and mobile applications without server side programming language.
Adding your android project to firebase have nothing to do with publishing app. It will not publish your app.
Play store console is what that is used to publish android apps.
What is Firebase?
In a simple way, firebase as a server and many more log details related to your app and user behavior. It's a complete package to monitor app, users and many more. It will also give you scope to build app without having your own server and also no need of any language.
I want to know if after adding project to firebase, does it mean the app is launched
No adding project does not mean your app has been published or launched, but you can see crashes, save data, authenticate and can use available features in firebase.
and will be accessible by anyone
What you want to make accessible? If it is app, then it will be only accessible to users when you publish app in play store in production. There are some other options such as alpha, beta, internal test - each of these have some own functionality. Here you can add users email ids as tester and invite them to test or about your app. When you have not published an APK in production mood it won't be visible publicly.
how do I tell someone to try the app when it has not been uploaded to playstore
After adding firebase project nothing mean to release/publish your app. Publishing in play store does mean that. Here I will suggest you upload your app APK in play store ALPHA/BETA/INTERNAL test release mood then add/invite people to test your app.
Related
We have developed small App for one company and we want it to be used in this company only. We're self hosting APK file and there is one problem. When people downloads our app Android is showing warning about "installing from untrusted source" - and that confuse a lot of workers.
Is there any way to validate or sign our APK with Google key but without putting it in PlayStore?
In addition I want to say, we have account on Google Play Console (we paid registration fee) but we dont want to use Google Enterprise solutions, which allows to create private app channels.
So, what actually happened is that, I had an app named X on Google play. It was getting around 400 downloads everyday and it was just 3.5 months from its launch when Google suspended it due to some policy violation.
The app X was getting very popular among the users. So the users started to demand the app again. Therefore what I thought is I should distribute it using some other medium or maybe create own website for the app.
And here is the main question. My app was using in-app purchases and also some firebase features. Now I would have to implement some other type of payment gateway and will also need a server. And my app is already on Firebase. So, its the best option for me to use it. But, I am little afraid, that if I keep using firebase, will it be safe ? Are there any chances that Google will close my firebase project as well ?
It is safe to keep using firebase as your app violated the policy of Google Play not your firebase project and as you told you are thinking to distribute your app through website so it's totally safe. Also if it makes you feel any better my app was also suspended from Google Play but i can still use my firebase project & it's related services.
Is there anyway I can publish a flutter app privately (maybe through a private link instead of app store or play store) so I can pass this link to specific users ?
Thanks,
If you're okay with using the Google Play Store, it does offer a bunch of options that may work, such as closed betas. You can keep your app private, and invite only. And then if you make any changes to your app, your users will get the updates without needing to send out another version to them directly.
You can always use HockeyApp it will allow you to publish both iOS and Android apps either privately (user will need a login) or publicly. I use it all the time for distribution of test/beta and demo apps.
I am confused about android application testing. when I publish an alpha version, do all the people who are registered as testers in the whole world have access to the app or do I get a link and send it to whoever I know to test it. if its the latter how can I get testers for my app.
Alpha and beta tests are working in the same way. You upload your app to google play, fill out all the fields in your store entry and then you need to create a Google Plus community. Copy and paste the URL of the community into the Google Play developer console as testers, you will see another URL2, this URL2 has to be opened by your testers. Now you need to find people joining your group in Google Plus and tell them the procedure for tester:
Open URL2
and confirm to participate the testing
The installation has to be started with a browser, the URL of your app is the same as for apps in production.
If you ship a new alpha version, your testers get the new version automaticly if they have configured that.
From here on everything is as it is for apps in production.
I agree it is a kind of an odd procedure and I hope I explained it clear. However, what you can always do, just upload your apk to a web server and provide your testers with the link for the app on your webserver, your testers only need to accept installations from third party. You can't get ratings for such an app.
Later what you said only will work out in alpha testing, you should have separate testing team in your organization so that you can share the URL with them to test the app or you can add them using their google play account so that the app will be visible only to them in their Google play app, not to all of the real time users.
Until you upload the apk in production mode, your app will not be visible to other users.
I have written an app that is hosted on our private server. We release updates to our customers via a push notification. All this works fine.
We always intended to publish the app on Google Play Store eventually but one of our customers that is a council, has published the app on the store without asking us. I think he wanted control of updating the app and the benefits of Alpha/Beta testing. This is causing us problems as when i try to upload the apk from my developers console, Google is saying the package name already exists on the Play Store.
I understand that once an app has been published on the Store then it cannot be deleted. It can however be unpublished. The following things concern me.
If the other person unpublishes the app, will i be able to upload the app from my developers console?
Will what i want to do require the other person to delete his developers console account?
If the other person does delete his account will there still be a reference to the package name after this deletion of account, meaning i still can't upload my app.
Now that someone else has published my app first, will i have to re-name the package of my app to upload to the store?
Any advise is appreciated, thanks in advance
Matt.