Is it possible to redirect the user of my app to my watchface entry in the recently released Pebble store, from my Android app?
Technically, I was wondering if the new 2.0.0 Pebble app catches any URIs or Intents in order to let the user land on an specific entry in the Pebble store, just like we can redirect users to a Play Store entry via market:details?id=xyz or even https://play.google.com/apps/details?id=xyz URIs.
Does it expose similar functionality?
Yes. You can use pebble://appstore/APP_ID where APP_ID is the Pebble appstore ID of your app, which you can find by going the developer portal, going into the details for your app, and it's the last part of the URL.
It doesn't work properly at the moment with the current Android betas, but it will be working by the time app is released.
Related
I have an app published in Google Play Store using my personal email id. However, we are planning to register as a startup and launch the app under a company name. When I contacted Google about this process, they said I have to remove the old app and publish it again as a new app from the new id. That would mean I will lose all the current users. Is there a way to do it without removing the old app or linking the old app to the new app? Or some way to force the users to download the update from the new publisher link?
I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question. If it isn't can you suggest someplace where I could get an answer for this?
Apps can be transferred to another developer account without any apparent change to the end user. But if you change the app, Id like from android.app.gekkouga to android.app.startup (which is how I think the person you spoke to understood you), then you have to republish the app which by all intents and purposes is a different app, as PlayStore assigns each app a unique url based on the app's unique app id.
Is it possible to 'block/prevent' users from using an old Android app?
I mean - I've already unpublished app from Play. This means that app is not available anymore for downloading.
But I'd like to restrict users to carry on using current installed app (which has been unpublished from Play).
Is it somehow possible?
Regards,
There isn't a way to check if the app is currently published to the Play Store, however you can check if there is a new version available.
From the link above:
String response = SendNetworkUpdateAppRequest(); // Your code to do the network request
// should send the current version
// to server
if(response.equals("YES")) // Start Intent to download the app user has to manually install it by clicking on the notification
startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("URL TO LATEST APK")));
Treating your users like this is not something you should do. Users have an expectation that once they have acquired an app they can keep using it, and you should respect that expectation.
But let's suppose there was a seriously good reason for doing it. Suppose your signing key and developer account had been compromised by an ex-employee, and you wanted to make sure users moved from the compromised app to a new app with a new package name.
You could then issue an update to the app which when loaded did nothing except display a message saying something like "This app is out of date and will no longer be updated. Please move to this app" and have a link to the new app in the Play store. Existing users would get the update, and while the old app is available to them, most users would not be able to get it.
As I said, this is very disrespectful behavior to your users in most situations, and I'd only recommend doing it if critical for user security.
I have read the app version control docs on both google and apple official websites but still have the following questions :
Google does not specify a particular time when the updated app would be available for download to users - how do I decide when to deploy updates to my web services? If I deploy the web services before the app is available then the app will be hitting the old web service and give an error, vice versa also the app will hit an incorrect web service and give an error. How can I time this efficiently.
The strategy that my team has come up with is to return back the app version every time a web service call is made, if the version number differs from the back end then the user will get a message saying "please update your app" and clicking okay will take them to the play store - here is there a way I can directly download the app on the phone when the user clicks okay instead of the user having to search for the app in the play store?
Are there any standard practices that apps around the world follow for updates?
I am adding an install referrer to a Play Store link.
If that link is launched from an Android device then I get the referrer data and everything works well.
But, when using the same link from desktop and choosing Web to Device installation to an Android device, the referrer value is not passed at all.
Is that the expected behavior? If so, Is there any other way to pass a parameter through an Web to Device install?
***** EDIT *****
Ok, it seems like this is the normal behavior according to Google Analytics Docs.
Google Play Campaign Measurement does not currently support web-to-device installs initiated from the web Play Store.
So my updated question is:
Is there any other way or a workaround to make it happen?
One workaround I've seen used is sending the link via SMS. On the desktop, the website visitor sees a "Text Me The App" form where they can enter their phone number and click "Send Link". They receive a link on their phone and open it there.
The link could be an intermediary page that redirects the user either to Google Play or to the iOS app store. So the same link can work on both platforms.
There are of course caveats with this approach: SMS sending fees, infrastructure needed for processing the submitted form data, privacy concerns (user is entering their phone number. Have fun doing this in EU :-) ). User's device needs to have a phone number so it can receive messages.
One commercial offering I've found that does this is https://docs.branch.io/pages/web/text-me-the-app/
Using INSTALL_REFERRER and our own broadcast receiver, we are able to track installs for a referral program in our app. We are, however, running into certain limitations in the tracking process. Has anyone been able to solve andy of these issues?
When we share a campaign URL with another user, when the second user tries to open the URL, he will encounter two options for opening it, browser and Google Play. The referral tracking is done only if user installs the app through Google Play.
For older versions like 2.1, we were not able to capture the referral tracking. So if the second user has OS 2.1, the app does not track the installation.
In order to load the referrer when sending the link to another user (and in order to avoid the browser/google-play question), the link should not be:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xxx.appname&referrer=abc
but
market://details?id=com.xxx.appname&referrer=abc