I'm about to change the application name of a fairly popular Android app published on Google Play.
I know how to do it, but I would also like to be sure that nothing but the name will be changed. For example I don't want to loose the application's position in the search results.
Is there anyone that has renamed a published application and can confirm that nothing but the name will change?
Best regards,
Andreas
EDIT: With "application name" I'm refering to the application label that you set in the manifest file, not the package name or the name of the apk.
If you mention that the app has changed name within the description i.e. "App1 is now App2!"
It should still show up in search when people search the old name, for 'rankings' it's based on the package name and should keep it's position.
Related
We've just released an app to the PlayStore, and this app name contains a hyphen, which makes it unfindable in the PlayStore unless I enclose the name with double-quotes.
As far as the package name goes, the hyphen is replaced with an underscore there to follow the docs' conventions, so no problems there...
Can I fix the findability while keeping the hyphen, or alternatively can I remove the hyphen and republish without causing trouble for users who've already downloaded the app with its current name.
First off, some general information about this can be found here
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9042516?hl=en
The title that is displayed in the playstore is just something you can change at any time through the developer console.
The actual title of the application can be changed in the AndroidManifest
<application
...
android:label="#string/app_name"
.../>
As long as you don't change the package name there should be no problem for current users.
Also, in my experience it takes quite some while before playstore search indexing is able to easily find your app with generic terms and strings. Brand new apps just have trouble showing up in general.
There is a reason why you can find WhatsApp with a completely misspelled word like: what-app. Basically the bigger you are, the more easily people can find you.
this might sound like a simple question, but I haven't been able to find a solution to this:
I created an app that I now want to publish, but while debugging, this app had an incorrect name.
Now, ofcourse I can change the namespace and / or label in my MainActivity, so that the app on my phone gets the right name assigned to - but if you check this app under "application" it still has its original name.
Is there anyway how I can change all of my Apps name in like "one click"? I did find a few instances, in which the "old" name still appeared, but changing one led to this app no longer debugging.
I'm using Visual Studio :)
THANKS!
You should change it in the AndroidManifest.xml
I need to end a dispute with my customer.
Is it possible to rename the application label, the shortcut name and the application icon after the APK is installed?
I would say no! absolutely no!
No rooted device, no external tool. The application is downloaded and isntalled by the standard Google Play market tool.
At the first execution the app know its new label/icon but it can't modify these properties itself.
Am I wrong?
You are not wrong sir.
The app's name and icon are stated in the manifest and cannot be changed during runtime. Android does not permit this.
You can, however, change the title of the app in the title bar via setTitle(name);
Hope you won some cash over this bet :)
After a lot of searches I found this:
How to change an application icon programmatically in Android?
So it seems to be possible.
I've already added my app to google play, I used the android develop console and everything is right.
But right now you only can access to my app using the name, but I would like to add some keywords, and my app apears easily.
how can I do that?
Thank you in advance
Google automatically picks up keyword from your title and app description. However, adding something like Keywords: keyword1, keyword2, keyword3 to your description is considered keyword spamming by Google, especially if you add the title, or the developer name of a competing app. Instead, try to include your keywords in the description in a natural manner.
I suggest you choose the right category for your app forexample if it is a riddles app, it would be best to choose the trivia category where users will easily access yo product. i also do agree with user1256477 that choosing the right keywords forexample words like brain teaser will some how help.
Here is a link that may be of help.
Feel free to check out the description on my app
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dogmaz.mindtwist
I am wondering which name will be better for my app. I am thinking about experiment, which will change name of application (in 10% downloaded apps). Later I could check statistics which app was used more often.
Is this possible?
No. The app name is specified in your manifest so it will be static. You could change the name in the titlebar of the app though.
Picking a good name is key.
depending on exactly what you want you have a few options. You can call
this.setTitle("New Title Here");
from an Activity and this will change the title that appears at the top of the screen just beneath the notification bar. If you are trying to change the title that appears in the launcher, or on the home screen under the icon I don't think you can do this programmatically. You'd have to create two seperate versions of your application and use the different values for < application android:label> inside your manifest for each of them. Or maybe you could create another values folder like values-hdpi if the values folder works the same as the layout and drawable folders (which I suspect it does, but I've never tested.) then it would pull the value from the Strings.xml file inside the hdpi folder if the device has high density display, so you could get a different name for those devices. Maybe using this method you could use a language modifier like values-esp and somehow force the app to go into 'spanish mode' for a certain subset of users so that it pulls this alternate value.
If I understand your question correctly, you want to know if it's possible to test different names on the Android Market, correct?
The only way to do this with the Google Market is to have two separate copies of your app, but using different package names for each. The name that appears in the Market is set on the Developer Console, and while it can be changed, you will not see two different entries for your app in the market.
This is because the market uses your package name to identify your app, not the app name that you supply.
So, while it's easy to change the display name of the app while it is running by using setTitle as #Tim and #Robby have said, this only changes the app title while it is running - it does not affect the name used in the Android package manager, and it also does not affect the name displayed in the Market.
As I say above, if you are wanting to test which name is more popular and therefore results in more downloads, you will need to have multiple apps on the market with different package names. You will also then have to consider how to handle upgrades, and if one name turns out to be very popular, I don't think there's any facility to "upgrade" the other users to your new package name since they are different packages and therefore there is no upgrade path. This means you'll either have to inconvenience users of the old name by somehow asking them to switch to the new app name, or maintain all named versions of your app for the expected lifetime of it.
If you do get your users to switch to the new app, you will then also have to consider how to migrate their data. This can be done (3G watchdog does it when you upgrade from the lite version to pro), but it's an extra layer of complexity that you can avoid.