I have an Android app that I want to push to be available to download for users in our company.
But I don't want the app to be visible publically to all.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can achieve this?
As mentioned in Google G-Suite,
You can use the managed Google Play store to host Android apps
specifically for your organization. You can control who can download
an app. You can also benefit from security checks, such as user
authentication and malware detection. You publish private apps to the
Play store from the Google Admin console or the Google Play Console.
Go through this link and follow the steps :
Manage Google Play private apps
It has some FAQs. Please read this and check if it fulfills your requirements.
Related
Google Play has something called Private Apps: https://support.google.com/googleplay/work/answer/6145139?hl=en
However, to my understanding this means that only members of my organization can install the app. It doesn't say what "organization" mean but I assume it's members of a Google Workspace or a specific email domain.
I want to achieve something similar to Apples "Unlisted apps": https://developer.apple.com/support/unlisted-app-distribution
This means the app is present on the Appstore, but it's not listed or searchable. Only if you have the link to the app you can download it, and the user will receive automatic updates.
Is there something similar on Google Play? I want to distribute and update the app via Google Play, but only to users that I share the url with.
You can publish the app on the Google Play store via the Play Console and while selecting where to launch (publish) the app, add the app/app bundle only to the closed testing option. There you can add specific email ids and only those will be able to see the app, get updates, etc. no one else.
we use internal testing on playstore to test the app internally before we move to closed and open beta. More details can be access in the below link
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9845334?hl=en
There are a lot of answers out there for how to publish an APK on Google Play, they involve the following:
Creating a Google Play Developer account and pay $25
Create a Google Developer App Project
Enable the Google Play Developer API is enabled on the project
Create a service account on the project and ensure that a role is selected during that process (got tripped up here myself when I didn't add a role)
Link the Google Developer App project to my Google Play Developer account and select the service account.
All this seems very technical and complicated when I'm trying to create a service where my clients can go to my site, create a simple mobile app and publish it on Google Play. I'm not expecting my clients to be technically minded so expecting them to do all this seems like a stretch too far.
Is it possible for me to get my clients to sign in with their google play developer account and do the other parts on their behalf for them? Or is there a more simpler way? Or can I publish their APK's on my Google Play Developer account and manage them for them?
Pushing apps to Google Play on behalf of clients is specifically forbidden by Google Play policy. You should carefully review the Play Policy on repetitive content otherwise your clients may not be happy when their apps are taken down.
"Apps that are created by an automated tool, wizard service, or based on templates and submitted to Google Play by the operator of that service on behalf of other persons are not allowed. Such apps are only permissible if they are published by an individually registered developer account belonging to the user of the automated tool, not the operator of the service."
You want the Google Play publishing API. See https://developers.google.com/android-publisher/#publishing
I have set up an internal testing channel on the Google Play Store. I have added a few testers for my app but could not find a way to check if a particular tester from the list has installed the app or not.
I think this can be found out in Appstore.
We would like to know who has installed the app.
I attempted using the firebase analytics dashboard and play console dashboard for the app as well, app statistics etc, but with no luck.
Is there a way to find this in Playstore?
The best way to distribute an Android or IOS application for testing to users is through Beta Crashlytics.
From there you will be able to see exactly who installed your application and who didn't.
It will let you know from your Fabric panel who has installed the app.
See documentation here on how to distribute your apk.
Google Play does not provide this information. Any feature like this would have to be carefully evaluated on how it affected user privacy.
The signup for internal testing requires the Google Play email address the user will use to install the app. While I have never found anything more than a count of testers who installed, you can retrieve the current account of the user using the app. It isn't exactly a neat and autonomous process, but you could craft a means to compare the list of potential users to the installed account.
The permission required is GET_ACCOUNTS and then you would use AccountManager to retrieve a list of accounts and iterate through them to see if any match a list of testers.
I am working of app support COSU app android. The app is working fine for me but I am not understand how user will update our app, because COSU app user can't access any other application even google play store. So now the question is that how user will update our application without google play access.
I have one solutin download app from our server, but in this case user will lose save data like the data we are storing in SharedPreference. Please guide me if you have any other solution for that. Thank in advence
According to Google's docs on COSU (Google Play app management), it is possible to "install, update, and uninstall apps using the Play EMM API". Under "Google-hosted private app management" it describes the ability to host private apps through Play that your users can install/update:
Simplifies the Google-hosted private app publishing and update
workflows available to all admins through managed Google Play, by
enabling admins to update Google-hosted private apps through the EMM console instead of through the Google Play console.
Enterprise admin can upload new versions of apps that are already published privately to the enterprise using the Google Play Developer Publishing API.
If you don't want to use Play for this functionality you can read the "Self-hosted private app management" section.
You can also look at "Managed Google Play" to publish private apps for your users: https://support.google.com/googleplay/work/topic/6145152
After you register for a Google Play Developer account and set up the correct administrator privileges to upload and publish the app to managed Google Play, you can use the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) console to distribute the app to users.
Going the EMM route will let you update apps with the same functionality as regular Google Play apps where updates don't cause users to lose data. Unfortunately Google's documentation isn't detailed or centralized for this feature. Going through Google will also require that all of your devices are signed in to Google account in order to install apps or receive updates that you deploy though the EMM console.
Another option is to use a mobile device management (MDM) solution. If you have Samsung devices you can look into Samsung Knox which has a much simpler method for distributing your app: https://www.samsungknox.com/en/article/manage-apps
Another MDM option for single use apps is Mason (https://bymason.com/). Mason lets you upload your app, select any or all of your devices, and then deploy your APK to your users. When updating your app, all you have to do is increment your app version and the update functionality will be the same as a regular Google Play update. Your users also don't have to be signed in to a Google account.
If this sounds useful to you feel free to reach out to me trevor # bymason.com
DISCLAIMER: I work at Mason
is it possible to retrieve the list of "My App" (included the uninstalled ones) from Google Play Store using Android SDK or external library?
Thanks!
There is an API to gather information of your apps in the Google Play Store, but currently it is very limited:
Currently, the API allows you to check the status of or cancel a user's subscription purchase.
https://developers.google.com/android-publisher/index
Other than that, there is no official way to retrieve information from the Google Play Store regarding your own applications. It's possible that using Google Analytics (and its associated API) could help you solve your problem.