I've been distributing beta APKs to my testers with the LVL checking enabled, and I'm getting many reports of the app behaving as if it is not licensed.
This is not a problem in the current version that is in the Play Store, and the LVL checking code hasn't changed since my last release.
I'm wondering: will the LVL library return 'unlicensed' or behave unpredictably on APKs that have not yet been uploaded to the Android Developer Console? Is it possibly these problems will go away when this update is downloaded from the Play Store?
I ended up pushing my update live, and I've not had any reports of the licensing failing with this code.
As was suggested in this thread, commenting out the versionCode/mVersionCode check in LicenseValidator was likely the reason my beta APK was failing. Hope that helps someone.
Related
The situation
An app is released to Google Play as apk. First release back in 2018, several apk updates since. Now as is required from Google (pr. August / November 2021), the format needs to be app-bundle instead of apk when updating the app.
I successfully build the app-bundle and uploaded to Google Play Console. I released the build on 'internal test' track. All seems to be just fine.
The problem
However, no matter what I do, I keep seeing and downloading the latest apk-version instead of the new app-bundle version.
The latest apk version-code is "400126/200126" (x64/x86).
The latest app-bundle version-code is "131".
I first thought it could be a problem that 131 < 400126 (obviously), so I created a new release on the 'internal test' track without any artifact - in the hope that could sort of 'reset' the state - and then creating a new release with the "131" app-bundle again. However no luck in getting the app-bundle version on my devices.
Besides I tried these things with no luck
Unsubscribing and re-subscribing the 'internal track' a dozens of times.
Removed and re-added my Google-id email from the set of 'testers' on Google Play a dozens of times.
Cleared the Google Play cache on my devices.
Installing from Web a dozens of times. Always ending up getting the latest apk-version installed. But actually, when entering my App on Google Play Web, it still shows the latest apk-version, even though it tells me (correctly) that this is a beta-version (indicating that I, indeed, is registered as internal tester). This, at least, is consistent with the fact that I keep download and finding only the latest apk in Google Play app on my phone-device, and not the app-bundle.
BUT! How do I get my new app-bundle available on the 'internal test'? All suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks!
I ended up creating a ticket at Google Support. They quickly replied that I simply needed to increase the build-number to > 400126. That makes a lot of sense.
However, we had another app where this was not needed - but that might be because the app had not yet been promoted to production at the time?
My company has an Android app published on the Play Store since 2018. We never had any problem with the app's distribution, however since July 2020 new versions submitted and released with full rollout do not appear on the Play Store's web page or Android app - they only show an older version, published on June 2020.
We are sure that this is not a matter of caching on our end, as it is consistent across devices and platforms.
Initially, we noted that the Pre-launch report page of the Developer Console showed a few errors for these newer builds and thought that because of them the system would not release the updates, so we fixed the errors. It didn't work.
We also used to use fastlane for preparing the app's APK and uploading it, so we tried preparing the APK using Android Studio's Generate Signed APK option and uploading it manually. It also didn't work.
Our app deals with mature themes (partner swapping), but we take very good care for it to be as safe as possible. The Google Play's Developer Console shows no warning or error message for the app, so we doubt this could be the reason.
New beta and internal versions appear to beta and internal testers, but when upgraded to production, they go back to the old version from June.
No changes were made to minSdkVersion or targetSdkVersion.
I'm trying to beta test an sdk that I uploaded to the developer console 2 days ago.
I have an apk currently published on production and a newer apk published in beta.
I followed all the steps (created google+ group, added testers, etc) but when I get to the https://play.google.com/apps/testing/***** page, it send me to the production app to download with an older version number.
So basically, I cannot download the beta apk from the play store, it makes me download the production version.
Has anyone ever had a similar experience? I'm trying to test out in-app purchases, but this is really putting a damper on my progress... any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
In case anyone has the same question I did, the answer was simply to wait.
I already had a version (versioncode=2) in Google Store. Yesterday after doing some changes, when I tried publishing the app, i am getting below error message and not able to publish the updates. Any idea how can I fix it?
This configuration cannot be published for the following reason(s):
Version 2 is not served to any device configuration: all devices that might receive version 2 would receive version 3.
Some devices are eligible to run multiple APKs. In such a scenario, the device will receive the APK with the higher version code.
FYI, the new version is versioncode=3
You need to "Deactivate" the current apk in order to actually publish the new apk.
Deactivate the 2 version on the Google Play.
All this says is that version 3 is applicable for all devices that version 2 is applicable for. This means version 2 is obsolete.
If you check closely, when you upload your APK there is no option to Publish to production, only Save as Draft. This happened to me last night and drove me crazy. Now, in the morning I uploaded the new APK again and the Publish to production button was there! I don't what caused this issue but now it's fine.
We have followed the instructions at http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_testing.html#billing-testing-real to introduce in-app billing to our application, and now want to add our live product IDs.
As per the instructions, we build our APK with the necessary permissions and sign the APK. Once the upload is complete, we get the following error :
"This configuration cannot be published for the following reasons : All devices that might receive version 3001 would receive version 3002."
We do NOT want to publish this APK, but only upload it as a Draft APK, in order to complete testing of IAP.
Does anyone have a workaround to this?
I was able to work around this problem by switching back to the old version of the Developer Console and then deactivating my one older version, after which I deleted that older version and saved the app. Upon returning the the new version of the Console, the problem was resolved.
However, I believe the old version of the console will soon become unavailable, so this approach may not be available much longer.
Deactivate the old version first and then you should be able to publish the new version of the app.
Switch to the old version and update the new apk...
It works for me.
Thanks Carl