Here I am developing Android app with android studio. I turned my google account into a google developer account and then published my app in the play store after signing that app within my computer. After a month I published an update for that app with the same package name. I also upgraded the "Version Name" & "Version Code". I checked the the situation by using a phone which has the initial release of the app, but after I released the update the specific page of that app in play store doesn't show an update button ("open"button is there).
How can I correct this?
Thanks.
If your phone with the "initial release" of the app didn't install it from the Play store, then the Play store won't update it. I suspect this will be your problem.
The Play store will only update apps for which it did the initial install (to avoid treading on the toes of app developers during development or other app stores).
The way it checks for "Did the Play store install this" is "Does the signature of the app match the signature in the Play store" and "does the user on the phone have a record of install from the Play store on their account on any device".
After updating an app on play store it can take several hours to be available on play store. Just wait for couple of hours.
So first of all you have to make sure the following three points are in place:
You are installing exactly the same variant from android studio compared to the one you published on google play store.
The app you installed from android studio has a lower "version code"
You are using exactly the same signing key.
Most likely the third point is what is stopping this from working. The problem is that if you are using app bundle as publishing format, that apk is not created yet when you upload the bundle and it will only be create and SIGNED at a later the stage, when the app is about to be distributed on a specific device.
Unfortunately, there is a chance, like in my case, that the signature still will not match perfectly even if you used exactly the same key to sign the app, reason being that if you have singed up for Google Play Store signing, google will add some metadata: "It does however insert a minuscule amount of metadata that helps with verifying the source and integrity of the distribution. This metadata comes in two flavors: For all apps uploaded to Google Play, Play has been adding security metadata after the signing block to enable features such as authorized P2P app sharing. We announced this originally in a blog post in 2017. For apps uploaded as app bundles, we will improve this security by introducing what is called a source stamp. This source metadata is inserted into the app’s manifest by bundletool. When the APK is generated on Play’s server, it’s also signed with a Google key in addition to your app signing key."
I yet have to solve this issue unfortunately
Related
I currently use the inner sharing of the play console to release new versions to testers. (They have exactly the same package name and signing key.)
However, the testers responded that they could not upgrade from the official version to the test version, so the app update process could not be tested.
If I install the app first and open the inner sharing link, the play store displays
"A public version of this app is already installed on this device. Uninstall it and try again"
Is there a way to upgrade directly from the official version to the test version in the play store like installing an apk? (not uninstall app)
For example, the internal test of the play console may be possible?
Thanks for your help.
If you're using internal app sharing https://play.google.com/console/u/0/internal-app-sharing/ to share your app, then it won't work. Internal app sharing is used to quickly share an app with your internal team and testers, it doesn't undergo google play review process.
So you can't update your public version using this.
You can however, use different play console tracks for uploading your apps and they will support updates. Here https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9845334?hl=en is the link for setting up open closed or internal track. When you upload your app to any of these tracks, they'll go through the google review process and once the app is available on playstore, testers can easily update it.
In case you don't want to wait for review, and want to use internal-app-sharing only, then, you can create 2 different versions of your app(different version numbers) and upload both of them to internal-app-sharing. You can then share the 2 links to your testers, and your testers should first install the lower version app and then open up the link of higher version number apk. It'll show the update button.
Edited(Thanks to #pierre): Although it looks like you're uploading artifacts signed with the same key, the Play Console actually re-signs the artifacts in the internal-app-sharing to avoid distributing an app signed with the production key that hasn't gone through their review process.
i made app and build it as an apk file in flutter and i tried to install it in my android phone but while installing it, play store said: the app is unkhown do you wanna install,
and then i installed the app and app was working well, the question is how i can solve it, Do i have to buy a play store account? or there is another way to solve it.
If you intend to make the app available to play store users then you need to create a play store account. Normally the warning that you received if from Android OS telling the user that the app can't not be trusted, since it does not come from the play store but yourself built it. You can ignore this "warning" for now.
The warning will not be shown to the users when the app is built, signed and uploaded to play store.
You should refer to the official documentation to know how to sign and publish your binary file to the Play Store.
You'll need 25$ to create the Play Store developer account (available for your entire lifetime) and a bit of reading from the official documentation
I have an app that is not deployed via Google play store.
It has it's own APK file server, and previously, it doesn't have "update" functionality. Because of it is special purpose app, so a user who need to update app, he need to just uninstall current app and install new app.
Now I need to update these already installed app via google play.
Question is:
Can I update app via Google play store, that is installed via APK file?
Tested environment:
Google play service 11.7.46
Play store 8.4.19
Galaxy S7
Released Koeran market only.
I tried:
1) Build three test APK Versions 1, 2, 3.
2) Deploy Version 2 and update Version 3 via Google play store.
3) [FAILED] Install APK Version 1 via ADB, and cannot update via Google play store. (In google play page of my test app, I can see buttons "UNINSTALL / OPEN"
This is exactly what I want to do.
4) [FAILED] Install APK Version 2 via ADB, and cannot update via Google play store. (In google play page of my test app, I can see buttons "UNINSTALL / OPEN"
Some of my colleague said this case is possible, but I couldn't achieved.
I found difference between signed APK and Google play extracted APK. By binary compare, many file was different.
Especially AndroidManifest.xml, this information was added in Google play-extracted apk.
<meta-data
android:name="com.android.vending.derived.apk.id"
android:value="1" />
It was possible to update old version apk that was downloaded from google play publish page.
I found below answer, but it seems not working in my case.
Will apk installed manually (not from play store) receive notification when update becomes available?
you will receive updates / see the app in the Google Play "installed
apps" tab only if the two conditions will take place:
the APK package name is the same as the one uploaded to Google Play
the keystore used to sign the app in the play store is the same
keystore used to release the apk you install manually.
In order to be updated by Play, the app has to be in the "User's library". This is a hard concept, but basically comes down to "has the user ever installed it from Play on any device". If the user has it in their user library, and the signature is the same as the signature on the Play store then the app will update.
If the user has never installed it from Play, then Play won't update it.
So what you want to happen won't happen, unless the user has previously installed it from Play on any device.
I have already published an app to version 2, and have uploaded an app with version 3 to to Google Play as a beta testing version, and then discovered with errors, so I have modified the codes is now ready for publish.
I tried to upload the correct apk with version 3 to Google Play, but it says I have already uploaded a version 3 apk already.
Question:
How to remove the wrong apk from the Google Play? Or what should I do? Or I can only modify and upload the app as version 4?
Thanks!!
You can not remove the apk from google play. You just have now update your application version and upload the new apk on google play that is the only way.
Please note that package names for app files are unique and permanent, so please choose wisely. Package names cannot be deleted or re-used in the future. Keep in mind that if you've lost your keystore, you'll have to publish the app with a new package name and a new key. You should also update the description of the original app and unpublish it.
If the app was ever published, this will not work. You can unpublish an app, but you cannot delete any .apk files that were ever active while the app was published. (This behavior is undocumented as far as I can find.) This is unfortunate; it would be nice to be able to completely remove all traces of an app that was never downloaded by anyone. Even better would be a sandbox area that emulated all aspects of Google Play, including buying your own app (and would support doing it through the emulator).
Check out HERE
I am developing an Android application and in this application, I am using "In app billing" features.
I uploaded apk on the google console account and set the product id, price and other required things and saved all the data in the draft.(Application is still in draft mode).
I did not publish my app yet.
After a few minutes, I realized that I uploaded old signed apk file and keystore of this apk has already lost.
Now I want to remove this old apk file and want to upload a new one in draft mode.
My problems are :
How to remove the old apk file from the google console account.(In Draft Mode)
How to upload the new signed apk file with new key store (As I have
lost my old key store)
EDIT:
I want to publish the app with the same name and with same package name. I do not want to change my app name atleast.
This can now be done by going to Release management > Artifact library and deleting the APK.
You cannot delete the artifacts anymore.
Here's a part of my chat with Pete through the built-in help & support.
Pete:
Thanks for waiting. You can't remove an apk that you've already
served. Your next Production apk has to be version code 3 or higher.
Me:
So I can't just delete the artifact of that build?
Pete:
That's correct.
(P.S. He mentioned version code 3 because of my specific issue)
You can try KOTIOS's answer.
Delete the aab / apk file from the Google Play Console on the App Bundle Explorer under Release Tab
Then select the apk/aab file you want to delete from the List
Quoting Can we still remove never-published apps from Google Play?:
Well, the answer is that the strategy still works. If you've never
published the app, you can remove all traces of it from Google Play
and another publisher account can then upload an app with the same
package name. All you need to do is deactivate (if necessary) and then
delete all .apk files and the app will disappear from your developer
console.
If the app was ever published, this will not work. You can unpublish
an app, but you cannot delete any .apk files that were ever active
while the app was published. (This behavior is undocumented as far as
I can find.) This is unfortunate; it would be nice to be able to
completely remove all traces of an app that was never downloaded by
anyone. Even better would be a sandbox area that emulated all aspects
of Google Play, including buying your own app (and would support doing
it through the emulator).
I also discovered that the delays involved in propagating changes to
all Google Play servers seems worse than it did a year ago with
Android Market. In one case, when testing license responses I had to
wait two hours after uploading (but not publishing) an app before the
response came back as anything from "NOT_MARKET_MANAGED".
You can do this by upload new apk with upper version
and the old Apk will deactivated automaticly