I wanted to know if it is possible to submit multiple versions of the same app to the Google Play store. I know that Google Play allows developers to submit multiple APK's to the target certain device configurations, but we would like to release a different name of the app to each of our clients. Things that would be different in each app are the logos, app names, access to different types of information for each customer. I wanted to know if this would violate the Google Play Store's submission guidelines (it is an app built using Adobe Phonegap build, each app package name would be the same), would it be subject to rejection? I know that there are multiple questions on this site similar to this, but they are older questions and I wanted to see if this is something that Google Play is offering. Thank you.
"each app package name would be the same"
AFAIK, that not possible, since package name is used as ID in play store.
The package names must be different. Ideally, you would have unique security keys that signed the APKs as well. It prevents one app from accessing the private data of another app. Other than that, there's no policy or technical block stopping you from posting the same APK with different flavors.
As has been said - the package name is used as the ID in the Play Store.
But the way around this is very simple - just use different package names!
You'll be making the same app with different branding anyway so you'll already have different code bases.
Copy your entire app folder.
Find the config.xml. It looks like this (from the docs): http://docs.phonegap.com/phonegap-build/configuring/#example
Change the id. If you have two apps you'd have:
com.phonegap.appname1
com.phonegap.appname2
Upload each app to a different PhoneGap Build repository. This will create two different apps. Easy.
Related
We want to manage different environments for our app on the Google Play Store.
The developer console provides the option to setup different tracks. (Internal, Open...)
Now i was wondering if there would be a way to install all or some of these tracks on the same time on the same device. This would make things more easy for the QA which needs to test all of the tracks.
I haven't found anything on the web and presume that it wont be possible because every track shares the same bundle identifier. Right now my best guess would be to create different Apps for the different environments which would be ugly and i believe also not easy to maintain.
But maybe i lucky and someone else had the same problem and found a better solution.
You can't do this, unfortunately. Android identifies apps using the package name. Different package names mean the apps are installed separately, whereas the same name means the app will (try to) install over the existing one. On the play store, each track (internal, etc.) has the same package name so you can't install these apps side by side.
One possible solution is to set up another app with a different name (probably using productFlavors and the applicationIdSuffix setting in build.gradle). You could then distribute that app either through a different non-public app in the play store, or using something like app centre that's designed for this kind of app delivery for QA purposes.
Context
We have an app (for both iOS and Android) that we would like to style differently for different customers. What I mean by this is that the functionality, features, navigation, layout etc. of the app will remain exactly the same but what will change is - fonts, icons, colours, button shapes,font sizes etc. which would be specific to the customer's brand. We also want to have a different store listing per brand and the app may be called with a different name per brand like XXX App
Probable Solutions
We have considered the following solutions
Have completely separate code bases for the app / customer - Advantage would be ease of publishing but super high maintenance costs would be the biggest disadvantage
Have single code base but do some sort of themeing solution / customer - In this case, not sure how the publishing process would work in terms of the bundle ids, store listing etc.
Have single code base with packages or libraries. Create different shell apps for different customers and import the core packages or libraries
Have a single app which is listed as our company's app, and each brand can use that - which is the prescribed solution on the stores, but it doesn't seem very commercially viable as a brand paying money would want their brand to be reflected in the app and their respective listing on the store
Using some homegrown bash script mechanism to configure things at build time?
something other mechanism...?
Questions
I would like to know
What would be the acceptable (by App store and Play store policies) mechanism to publish such an app for different customers.
In case of one store listing per customer, could the applicationID (android) or bundleID (ios) be same for all the listings on the stores? or would they have to be different?
In case of one store listing per customer, for iOS would the app require different SKU for each listing?
In case of one store listing per customer, for iOS would the app require different SKU for each listing?
Thanks
According to App Store review guidelines, you MUST publish the app with the apple id of your customers because it has the name and brand of them. Or, you could publish by yourself with a legal written statement that says that you can use their brand to publish the app.
The guideline 5.2 talks about this with more details.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
For google play the thing is the same, but the implementation came more recently. I personally dont tried to submit an app for a customer after google published this new rules, but I did it once (2 months ago) and no problems so far.
You can look at this rules in more details here:
https://play.google.com/about/ip-impersonation/ip/
Now, talking about the bundle id and app id, they must be different. For the name of the app this wouldnt be a problem, but for the app id and bundle they must be different.
For your solutions, all work fine. But in my experience a very maintained app that relies on config files to customize the interface for each client is more prone to work. I know that each client will ask for custom modifications, but for that you can use branches for each one and maintain always updated to the master branch.
I published many versions so far. And, the users should use the most recent app. However, apkpure shows all the app list that I released.
How come this website take all the apk or abb? I don't want the website takes my applications and block the users in the app. Is there any way to do that?
Actually it's possible to do, using one of the Android features like app bundles. This could help you to verify non Google Play installation. Or even create behavior to crash/exit in such cases.
The whole idea of the approach, it's separation application features to different bundles which could installed be installed within Google play package manager. So you can check it's documentation.
Lots of android users can not access play store when removing the google restrictions, because they want apk file for install. Third party websites publish for that kind users, As well as some desktop users want APk file specially GAME APPs. I think they not Change original APK file.
I have already published an app for the google play store, and now it is in use by around 1000 users and is still growing. However, I find that the code which I used is quite cluttered for me to add new features, and so I am planning to write a different version of the app. I have two questions:-
Is it possible to publish an app with a different package name under the same listing I have used for the original, and how should I do this?
If I cannot do the above, can I publish a different app with the same package name for this to work?
This whole scenario is given that I have all the signing credentials for the old and new apps.
NO it is not possible to publish an app with a different package name but you can change the version code and republish this app with new code by signing the app with the same credential. hope it will help.
I need to publish the same app multiple times with just some small differences (app name, app launcher icon, colors and images).
I will configure Gradle to have a different applicationIdSuffix for each buildTypes.
So the apps will have this kind of packages: "com.appname.app1", "com.appname.appB", "com.appname.app3", "com.appname.app1234", etc...
Is that allowed from the Google Play Store rules?
Yes. You can publish the apps by changing there package names.
No, you cannot do what you are proposing. It is against the Play Store rules to do this.
If they determine you are doing this, your account could get banned, and there is precedence for this.
You really need to figure out how you can target multiple platforms with the same APK.
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