Tag Archives: android developers

Google Play Coffee break with Creatrip | Setting up your business for global reach

Posted by Aditya Swamy, Director, Google Play PartnershipsI sat down for a “virtual coffee” with Haemin Yim, founder and CEO of Creatrip, from Korea to discuss starting on the web, setting up the company for global reach, and tips for startups looking to grow.

In Haemin’s words “Creatrip is an app that provides a gateway to authentic Korean trends and cultures.” Last year, they took part in the ChangGoo program, an initiative that supports Korean app startups in partnership with the South Korean government. The Creatrip team applied the learnings of the program to continue to grow and now have users from over 100 countries.Here are my key takeaways from our conversation:
illustration of three people in a rowboat at sea during a storm. The person at the helm is looking at weather related data

Expanding the app's value proposition to address challenges

Despite having a great idea for an app, Haemin shared with me that it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. After gaining significant brand awareness and with increasing travel bookings across the app, the pandemic sent the travel industry into disarray. As with many businesses, this had significant implications for Creatrip. However, Haemin and the team used their strong understanding of the people using their app to quickly expand their offering.

With the knowledge that people often wanted to visit South Korea because of their interest in K-trends and culture; Haemin adapted the business to provide K-products to those who were unfortunately unable to travel during that period. This led Haemin to grow the business beyond just a travel app and into a global e-commerce platform.

Creating new content to fuel app growth

Creatrip started as an app that provided travel content. It quickly expanded to provide people with in-app booking features, local currency exchange rates that weren’t previously digitized, and even a global e-commerce platform providing access to popular ‘K-items’. However, content is the key element that draws users into the app.

My top advice for businesses looking to continue to evolve their content is to expand their content creator pipeline. For example, by encouraging South Korean locals to contribute, Creatrip could gain a richer and more diverse range of content, showcasing Korea through the eyes of many different people. Haemin and the team are already in the process of building a new feature that allows people to create their own content on the app.

Think about short form video apps. By allowing people to become their own content creators, it enables them to have a much wider repository of content and encourages users to spend more time on the app. Now more people want to be creators and make their own content as seen on YouTube. This is fueling growth in watchtime, and adding more users.

illustration of two people receiving global information on shopping, popular items, trends, data, and people via their laptop and phone screen

Going global from the start

Something I found particularly interesting from my chat with Haemin, was how she prepared the business for global reach from the start. Haemin believes that despite requiring a bit more time and effort, preparing for global reach from the beginning can actually allow for exponential growth, as you start to target the right markets and reach a global fan base. It is wonderful to see how Haemin brings her passion for all things Korean, to people all around the world. The team’s first step towards going global was by listening to and understanding the needs of the people already using Creatrip.

The team at Creatrip have definitely brought a lot of unique ideas to the app. With 90% of their users having started on the website, the team had an ingenious idea to bring people over to mobile. They listened to their global users and saw that people were keen to find out the currency exchange rates being provided at local stores in Seoul. They created a mobile-only feature that shows local currency rates from local stores. This required the team to actually go to the stores twice a day, however it led to a large increase in people using the mobile app - all by providing information that was previously unavailable to people from outside of Seoul.

Planning for the future

It’s amazing to see how much Creatrip is flourishing; the app has grown from 100k monthly users up to 1.5 million. There are many factors that helped Creatrip grow over the past few years, but some notable takeaways from my chat with Haemin include:

  1. Taking the time to understand the people using their apps and their needs
  2. Launching app only features to drive people from web to the app
  3. Using content as a means to get new users and increase engagement
For Haemin, there are still a lot of opportunities ahead. She believes that the ‘K-phenomenon’ will keep growing for the foreseeable future and this will aid more travel across South Korea. The team at Creatrip is focused on continuing to expand the cross-border shopping experience so people can buy South Korean trending products, no matter what country they live in. I can’t wait to see how Creatrip continues to bring the magic of Korea to the world.

As a final thought I couldn't let Haemin go without asking her favorite K trends. She mentioned that fusion fine dining was a top trend in Korea, NewJeans were a trending K-pop band, and South Korean blankets were a top K-product.

Do you have any questions for Creatrip? What are your own tips for other app or game businesses? Let us know on Twitter.


Google Play logo

Per-App Language Preferences – Part 1

Posted by Neelansh Sahai Android Developer Relations Engineer (on Twitter and LinkedIn)What if you have a set of users who are quite fluent in English, Hindi, and Spanish, and they have a news app on their phones and prefer to read the news in Hindi? For their texting app, they prefer Spanish as they have some friends and family who they text with in Spanish. But for ease of access, they still prefer their device to be in English. Now there are many such use-cases where the users might want their app languages to be different from their system language. Interesting!

Starting with Android 13, we have included one of the most-requested features from users, Per-App Language Preferences. It lets users switch app languages from System settings, providing users with better control over their language choices for different apps, irrespective of the system language.
A cellphone screen displaying App language preferences in system settings for the YouTube app

Build for your multilingual users

This blog focuses on how to integrate the Per-App Language Preferences API in your app to provide your users the flexibility to choose different languages for different apps.

1.    Users can change the language settings from system settings by selecting: 

Settings → System → Languages & Input → App Languages → [Select the desired App] → [Select the desired Language]

NOTE: Only those apps that have opted in for the feature by specifying the locale_config.xml file (more on this below), will appear in system settings.

A cellphone screen demonstrating finding the language settings from system settings by selecting Settings → System → Languages & Input → App Languages → [Select the desired App] → [Select the desired Language]
2.    If your app already has an in-app language picker, you can integrate the Per-App Language Preferences API to leverage the full platform support. For pre-Android 13 users, the system settings won’t be visible, but developers can still provide an in-app language picker.

A cellphone screen demonstrating integrating the Per-App Language prefences API for an app which already has an in-app language picker

How to integrate this feature in your app?

There are 5 steps that need to be followed while working on the Per-App Language Preferences feature, listed here →

 


1.    Create locale_config.xml file


Create a new file in values/xml/ directory and name it as locale_config.xml. This file should contain a list of all the locales that are supported by the app. The list element should be a string containing a locale tag.

NOTE: The locale tags must follow the BCP47 syntax, which is usually {language subtag}–{script subtag}–{country subtag}. Anything other than that will be filtered out by the system and won't be visible in the system settings.


locale_config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<locale-config xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    ...

    <!-- English -->
    <locale android:name="en"/>



    <!-- Japanese (Japan) -->          
    <locale android:name="ja-JP"/>



    <!-- Chinese (Macao) in Simplified Script -->
    <locale android:name="zh-Hans-MO"/>



    <!-- Chinese (Taiwan) in Traditional Script -->
    <locale android:name="zh-Hant-TW"/>  
    ...
</locale-config>





2.    Add the locale_config in the AndroidManifest.xml

Specify this locale_config.xml file in the app’s AndroidManifest.xml

AndroidManifest.xml

<manifest>
    ...
    <application
        ...
        android:localeConfig="@xml/locale_config">
    </application>
</manifest>


After steps 1 & 2, your users will be able to discover and set their language preference for your app from system settings on devices running Android 13 or higher. In case your users are on devices running on versions lower than Android 13, you can provide an in-app language picker. Optionally, you can also include the same language picker in your app for devices running Android 13 or higher. When your app includes an in-app language picker, it's important for the user's preferences to be in sync between the system and the app. This is where the AndroidX APIs come into the picture. Read on to learn how to create an in-app language picker.




3. Add the libraries

Use the latest version of AppCompat Library

build.gradle (app)

def latestAppCompatVersion =  “1.6.0-rc01”

dependencies {
    ...
    implementation "androidx.appcompat:appcompat:$latestAppCompatVersion"
    implementation "androidx.appcompat:appcompat-resources:$latestAppCompatVersion"
    ...
}




4. Use AndroidX APIs

Use the APIs in your code to set and get the app locales.

MainActivity.kt

val appLocale: LocaleListCompat = LocaleListCompat.forLanguageTags("xx-YY")

// Call this on the main thread as it may require Activity.restart()
AppCompatDelegate.setApplicationLocales(appLocale)


// Call this to get the selected locale and display it in your App
val selectedLocale = AppCompatDelegate.getApplicationLocales()[0]

NOTE: These APIs are also backward compatible, so even if the app is being used on Android 12 or lower, the APIs would still behave the same, and no additional checks for OS versions are required in your code.


 
5. Delegate storage to AndroidX

Let AndroidX handle the locale storage so that the user's preference persists.

AndroidManifest.xml

<application
    ...
    <service
        android:name="androidx.appcompat.app.AppLocalesMetadataHolderService"
        android:enabled="false"
        android:exported="false">
        <meta-data
            android:name="autoStoreLocales"
            android:value="true" />
    </service>
    ...
</application>


Steps 3, 4, & 5 above demonstrate the minimum components needed to create an in-app language picker.

And with this, your app can now support locale switching.


Additional things to take care of while migrating to the API

Earlier, developers had to handle the user's preferences on their own, either by using SharedPreferences, storing the data on a server, or other app logic. With the new APIs, there is no need to handle this separately. So when you are using these APIs, AndroidX is already taking care of the storage part, but what happens when the app is opened for the first time after a user updates their device to Android 13 or higher?

In this case, the system won’t be aware of the user’s preferences for the app language and thus it will map the app to the default system language. To avoid this, developers need to add some one-time migration logic so that their users don’t have to set the language again when they update the app.

// Specify the constants to be used in the below code snippets

companion object {

    // Constants for SharedPreference File
    const val PREFERENCE_NAME = "shared_preference"
    const val PREFERENCE_MODE = Context.MODE_PRIVATE

    // Constants for SharedPreference Keys
    const val FIRST_TIME_MIGRATION = "first_time_migration"
    const val SELECTED_LANGUAGE = "selected_language"

    // Constants for SharedPreference Values
    const val STATUS_DONE = "status_done"
}




// Utility method to put a string in a SharedPreference
private fun putString(key: String, value: String) {
    val editor = getSharedPreferences(PREFERENCE_NAME, PREFERENCE_MODE).edit()
    editor.putString(key, value)
    editor.apply()
}

// Utility method to get a string from a SharedPreference
private fun getString(key: String): String? {
    val preference = getSharedPreferences(PREFERENCE_NAME, PREFERENCE_MODE)
    return preference.getString(key, null)
}


// Check if the migration has already been done or not
if (getString(FIRST_TIME_MIGRATION) != STATUS_DONE) {

   // Fetch the selected language from wherever it was stored. In this case it’s SharedPref

   // In this case let’s assume that it was stored in a key named SELECTED_LANGUAGE
   getString(SELECTED_LANGUAGE)?.let { it →

      // Set this locale using the AndroidX library that will handle the storage itself
      val localeList = LocaleListCompat.forLanguageTags(it)
      AppCompatDelegate.setApplicationLocales(localeList)

      // Set the migration flag to ensure that this is executed only once
      putString(FIRST_TIME_MIGRATION, STATUS_DONE)
   }
}

 

What flexibility does the feature provide to the users and developers?

Here are a few things that might prove to be beneficial for you users.

  1. All devices running Android 13 or higher will have a common place for users to discover and change the language of their apps.
  2. Although the system settings are limited to the devices running Android 13 or higher, the AndroidX APIs are backwards compatible. Thus, there is no requirement to add OS Version checks in your code while building for your multilingual users.
  3. Developers do not need to handle configuration changes separately or worry about storing the user's selected language every time. The API handles configuration changes and stores the language preferences for you.
  4. Works with other Android features like Backup and restore. If a user switches to a new device and restores the previously backed up data, your app will retain the user’s last preferred language, thus providing your users with a better and more seamless experience.

Recap

With that, most parts of the feature are covered. So let’s have a quick recap on what we discussed in today’s read.

  1. A quick read on what Per-App Language Preferences offer to multilingual users and app developers.
  2. What end users will see on their devices.
  3. How to migrate your app to the Per-App Language Preferences APIs.
  4. A few things that need to be taken care of while migrating to the APIs to ensure a better user experience.
  5. Lastly, the benefits that end users and developers can leverage from this feature.

References

  1. Per-App Language Preferences
  2. Sample App ( Compose )
  3. Sample App ( Views )
  4. Per-App Language Preferences (YouTube Video)

#WeArePlay | Discover what inspired 4 game creators around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

From exploring the great outdoors to getting your first computer - a seemingly random moment in your life might one day be the very thing which inspires you to go out there and follow your dreams. That’s what happened to four game studio founders featured in our latest release of #WeArePlay stories. Find out what inspired them to create games which are entertaining millions around the globe.

Born and raised in Salvador, Brazil, Filipe was so inspired by the city’s cultural heritage that he studied History before becoming a teacher. One day, he realised games could be a powerful medium to share Brazilian history and culture with the world. So he founded Aoca Game Lab, and their first title, ÁRIDA: Backland’s Awakening, is a survival game based in the historic town of Canudos. Aoca Game Lab took part in the Indie Games Accelerator and have also been selected to receive the Indie Games Fund. With the help from these Google Play programs, they will take the game and studio to the next level.

#WeArePlay Marko Peaskel Nis, Serbia

Next, Marko from Serbia. As a chemistry student, he was never really interested in tech - then he received his first computer and everything changed. He quit his degree to focus on his new passion and now owns his successful studio Peaksel with over 480 million downloads. One of their most popular titles is 100 Doors Games: School Escape, with over 100 levels to challenge the minds of even the most experienced players.

#WeArePlay Liene Roadgames Riga Latvia

And now onto Liene from Latvia. She often braves the big outdoors and discovers what nature has to offer - so much so that she organizes team-building, orienteering based games for the team at work. Seeing their joy as they explore the world around them inspired her to create Roadgames. It guides players through adventurous scavenger hunts, discovering new terrain.

#WeArePlay Xin Savy Soda Melbourne, Australia

And lastly, Xin from Australia. After years working in corporate tech, he gave it all up to pursue his dream of making mobile games inspired by the 90’s video games he played as a child. Now he owns his studio, Pixel Starships, and despite all his success with millions of downloads, his five-year-old child gives him plenty of feedback.

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.



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#WeArePlay Xin Savy Soda Melbourne, Australia Google Play g.co/play/weareplay

#WeArePlay | Discover what inspired 4 game creators around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

From exploring the great outdoors to getting your first computer - a seemingly random moment in your life might one day be the very thing which inspires you to go out there and follow your dreams. That’s what happened to four game studio founders featured in our latest release of #WeArePlay stories. Find out what inspired them to create games which are entertaining millions around the globe.
Born and raised in Salvador, Brazil, Filipe was so inspired by the city’s cultural heritage that he studied History before becoming a teacher. One day, he realised games could be a powerful medium to share Brazilian history and culture with the world. So he founded Aoca Game Lab, and their first title, ÁRIDA: Backland’s Awakening, is a survival game based in the historic town of Canudos. Aoca Game Lab took part in the Indie Games Accelerator and have also been selected to receive the Indie Games Fund. With the help from these Google Play programs, they will take the game and studio to the next level.
#WeArePlay Marko Peaskel Nis, Serbia
Next, Marko from Serbia. As a chemistry student, he was never really interested in tech - then he received his first computer and everything changed. He quit his degree to focus on his new passion and now owns his successful studio Peaksel with over 480 million downloads. One of their most popular titles is 100 Doors Games: School Escape, with over 100 levels to challenge the minds of even the most experienced players.
#WeArePlay Liene Roadgames Riga Latvia
And now onto Liene from Latvia. She often braves the big outdoors and discovers what nature has to offer - so much so that she organizes team-building, orienteering based games for the team at work. Seeing their joy as they explore the world around them inspired her to create Roadgames. It guides players through adventurous scavenger hunts, discovering new terrain.
#WeArePlay Xin Savy Soda Melbourne, Australia
And lastly, Xin from Australia. After years working in corporate tech, he gave it all up to pursue his dream of making mobile games inspired by the 90’s video games he played as a child. Now he owns his studio, Pixel Starships, and despite all his success with millions of downloads, his five-year-old child gives him plenty of feedback.

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.


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#WeArePlay Xin Savy Soda Melbourne, Australia Google Play g.co/play/weareplay

Play it forward: Evolving our platform for another decade of developer success

Posted by Alex Musil, Director of Product, Google Play

It’s been a big milestone year for Google Play. Having just celebrated our 10th birthday, we’re looking ahead to the next 10 years and thinking about the ways our platform needs to evolve. To do that, we’re launching tons of new features to help you build more sustainable businesses and improve the experience for everyone in the Play ecosystem.

We’ve always been committed to making Google Play a place for developers to build successful businesses, while helping users safely find high-quality content to enjoy. That’s why, over the last year, we’ve made several updates designed to help our developers in ways big and small, from major investments in new content to targeted beta programs to help you find your niche. So in case you missed any of our recent announcements, here’s a recap of all the big updates we’ve recently made to our platform.


Supporting and rewarding great apps and games on Google Play

We’re developing new ways to promote and support high-quality titles throughout the entire lifecycle, from acquisition and engagement to retention and reacquisition. That’s why, over the coming months, we’re rolling out enhancements to Google Play and Google Play Console that embed your key events, content, and offers across the Google Play experience.

For select titles, LiveOps is a great way to reach users directly with offers, launches, and events. Soon, we’ll be expanding how your content is used on Google Play by creating new high-impact placements and formats. Because new content types will be added over time, we’re renaming LiveOps to “Promotional Content” to better reflect the breadth of content you can submit. Promotional Content is already available for thousands of titles and we're looking to expand to more developers next year.


New content formats will help users discover and rediscover high-quality content to enjoy. Final design may vary.

Another key part of the lifecycle is bringing back users who’ve tried your title before. Rolling out towards the end of this year, Churned-user Custom Store Listings will enable you to tell a different story to users who’ve tried but uninstalled your apps or games. If you’d like to be one of the first to try this feature, let us know by filling out this form.


Raising the bar on technical quality

Android users expect a great experience from the apps and games they download, so we’re making higher-quality titles more visible on the Play Store and steering users away from lower-quality ones. One of the most important ways to boost your app quality and attract more users is to focus on technical quality. To do that, we’re implementing new quality thresholds that better align with the user experience.

GOOGLE PLAY’S APP QUALITY BAR
To maximize visibility on Google Play, keep your app below these thresholds.
Core vital

Overall (across all devices)

Per phone model

User-perceived crash rate1.09%8%
User-perceived ANR rate

0.47%8%

Some apps and games that don’t meet these thresholds will be excluded from impactful discovery surfaces such as recommendations, while others may display a warning on their store listing to set appropriate user expectations.

Check out this blog post to learn more about these changes, plus new features in Android vitals to help you monitor and act on technical issues and opportunities.

A more flexible and powerful commerce platform

This year, we’ve made improvements across our commerce platform, including an improved purchase experience, more flexibility and control over your subscriptions, and new monetization insights and programs to help you boost your revenue.

For example, we’ve improved the purchase flow for purchases made by a child or family member account. Parents or the “family manager” can now make purchases on behalf of their child without setting up a family payment method. Now when a family member tries to make a purchase in your app without a family payment method set up, we’ll send a purchase request to the family manager. The family manager can then complete the purchase with any payment method, including gift cards.

For more commerce updates, check out our blog post.


Keeping Google Play Safe with New Features and Programs

Our safety initiatives and policies evolve to help developers like you launch trusted experiences to more than 2.5 billion users around the world.

First, we’re launching new Play Integrity API features to help you defend against unknown, risky traffic. You can customize your API responses and set up tests in Play Console, and use new reporting to analyze and break down API responses across your install base. And, soon, you’ll be able to debug Integrity API responses from the Play Store app’s developer settings on any device.

Second, we’re launching multiple programs to better partner with you. We’re helping protect your apps against inaccurate, coordinated review attacks, providing more communication and global training about our policies and how to comply, and expanding pilots on direct phone support and enforcement strike removal.

And finally, our Developer Previews offer a more privacy-friendly approach to advertising. Please share your Privacy Sandbox feedback with us as we continue to build this multi-year program alongside our advertising industry and developer partners.


Google Play Games beta on PC continues global expansion

Earlier this year, we announced that Google Play Games would be coming to PCs as a beta experience to a limited number of markets. In August, we expanded the product to all players in Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Australia. Beginning today, we’re excited to make Google Play Games beta available for download to all players in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.

In the last few months, our Google Play Games catalog growth has been accelerating with many popular mobile titles including 1945 Air Force, Blade Idle, Cookie Run: Kingdom, and Evony: The King’s Return. All of these titles and dozens more can be played on Windows PCs via a standalone application built by Google.

This program builds on our goal of meeting players where they are, giving them access to their games on as many devices as possible. Additionally, since launching earlier this year we have made significant strides to reach even more players by reducing the minimum spec requirements to PCs running Windows 10+ with an integrated graphics card and 4+ core CPU. To learn more, check out our blog post.

ALT TEXT
Android games can be seamless synced across signed-in devices with Google Play Games.

Thank you for being a part of the Google Play ecosystem, whether you’ve recently joined or been with us since the beginning. Together, we’re looking forward to another 10 exciting years.


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Raising the bar on technical quality on Google Play

Posted by Lauren Mytton, Group Product Manager, Google Play App quality is the foundation of everything we do at Google Play. Android users expect a great experience from the apps and games they download, so we’re making higher-quality titles more visible on the Play Store, as well as steering users away from lower-quality ones. Some apps and games that don’t meet our quality bar will be excluded from prominent discovery surfaces such as recommendations, while others may display a warning on their store listing to set appropriate user expectations.

One of the most important ways to boost your app quality and attract more users is to focus on technical quality. In this post, we’ll explain how Google Play is evolving its definition of technical quality to be more aligned to user experience, and introduce new features in Android vitals to help you monitor and act on technical issues or opportunities.

1. Aligning our definition of technical quality with user experience

Android vitals is your one-stop destination for monitoring technical quality on Google Play, including stability and performance metrics from the field. The most important metrics are called core vitals, and they affect the visibility of your app on Google Play.

[UPDATED] Core vitals metrics
Moving forward, we’re replacing the existing core vitals metrics with new, more user-focused metrics. We believe these metrics are a better reflection of user experience, and we’ve seen a stronger correlation with uninstalls.
New Core Vitals User-perceived crash rate The percentage of daily active users who experienced at least one crash that is likely to have been noticeable (e.g. in the foreground) User-perceived ANR rate The percentage of daily active users who experienced at least one ANR that is likely to have been noticeable (e.g. after user input)

[CONTINUED] Overall bad behavior threshold
To improve quality across the board, we will continue to enforce an overall bad behavior threshold. The overall threshold will use the new metrics, but remain unchanged at 1.09% for user-perceived crash rate, and 0.47% for user-perceived ANR rate. To maximize your title’s visibility on Google Play, it’s important to stay below these thresholds.

[NEW] Quality bar per phone model
Technical quality can vary across devices. For example, an app can be stable and smooth on one phone model, but not another. To account for this, we are introducing a new bad behavior threshold that is evaluated per phone model (e.g. Pixel 6). At launch, this threshold will be set to 8% for both user-perceived crash rate and user-perceived ANR rate.


GOOGLE PLAY’S APP QUALITY BAR
To maximize visibility on Google Play, keep your app below these thresholds.
Core vital

Overall (across all devices)

Per phone model

User-perceived crash rate1.09%8%
User-perceived ANR rate

0.47%8%


If your title exceeds the device bad behavior threshold on any core vital for a given phone model, then Google Play may reduce the visibility of your title for users on that phone model. For example, we may exclude the title from some discovery surfaces, and in some cases, we will show a warning on your store listing to indicate to users that your app may not work properly on their phone. The Play Store will start applying store listing warnings on November 30, 2022.
Screen shot of a phone screen showing a store listing warning that the app shown, Soccer Winner 2021, may not work properly on the device based on recent data from similar devices
Users may see a store listing warning if a title has a user-perceived crash rate or user-perceived ANR rate above 8% on their phone model starting November 30, 2022. Note that the warning text is subject to change.

2. New tools to help you monitor and act on technical issues

To help you meet these new quality guidelines, we’ve launched a number of new features in Android vitals to make it easier to monitor and act on any issues.

Monitor the new user-perceived crash and ANR rate metrics in Play Console, or using the API
The new metrics are available in Play Console in Android vitals, and also in the Play Developer Reporting API. The existing metrics remain available for context.

Stay on top of overall and per-phone model technical quality with Android vitals
You can monitor how your title is doing against overall bad behavior thresholds in Android vitals. In addition, Android vitals will warn you if you are exceeding the per-phone model threshold. It will also tell you which phones, and how many users, are affected.

Prioritize and address overall and per-phone model technical quality issues with new features in Android vitals
To understand the causes of technical quality issues on your user-perceived crash and ANR rates, look at the underlying crash and ANR clusters that contribute to these rates. You can view these in the Crashes and ANRs page in Android vitals - both overall, or on for any specific phone model. Address the issues affecting most users first to reduce your issue rate more quickly.

Sometimes, specific aspects of device hardware or software can contribute to your issue rates. To help you catch and resolve those issues, we’ve launched a new feature in Android vitals that will notify you if we find any potential associations. You can also explore associations yourself on the Reach and devices overview page.

Your user-perceived crash rate is particularly high on Android 10 Your user-perceived crash rate on Android 10 (3.74%) is significantly higher than your overall user-perceived crash rate (2.22%). This Android version represents 44% of your total installs. Reduce user-perceived crashes on this Android version to improve your overall user-perceived crash rate. Show this Android version View in Reach and devices Dismiss
Android vitals will alert you of issues potentially associated with device hardware or software.

When prioritizing per-phone model quality issues to tackle, take into account both existing users, and the opportunity cost or impact on new users. To help you do this, we have launched one-click access to consolidated device information in Play Console, including install base, revenue, ratings and reviews. This information is displayed in a side panel so you don’t have to leave the page that you’re on.

Screen shot of the Play Console showing the new side panel with device infromation such as ratings and reviews
A new side panel in Play Console provides consolidated device information in context.

3. What to do now

Ensure the relevant people have access to Android vitals. The new quality metrics are live in Android vitals, and any overall or per-phone technical quality issues will be shown there. We recommend that you review Android vitals regularly in Play Console, or that you integrate with the Play Developer Reporting API to incorporate data directly into your own workflows. For more information, check out the Android developer site.

Although we’re starting at 8%, we’d like developers to aim for per-phone stability metrics that are no worse than 2%. With that in mind, you should expect the per phone model threshold to become lower in the first half of 2023. In the future, we may also extend our quality bar to include new metrics that reflect other important aspects of the user experience. We will provide you with advance notice of any changes.

Users expect great experiences on their devices, and developers who deliver on their expectations will achieve greater success on Google Play. While these updates were designed to help both users and developers to avoid the worst experiences, our long-term focus is to increase the number of great user experiences. To do this requires investment in other aspects of technical quality beyond crashes and ANRs, as well as investment in non-technical aspects of quality. Keep an eye out for more on this topic in the coming months.

5 Play Console updates to help you understand your app’s delivery performance

Posted by Lidia Gaymond, Product Manager, Google PlayPowered by Android App Bundles, Google Play gives all developers the benefits of modern Android distribution. As the Android ecosystem expands, it’s more important than ever to know how your app is being delivered to different devices.

Delivery insights help you better understand and analyze your app’s delivery performance and what contributes to it, and take action to optimize the experience for your users. Here are five recent Play Console updates you can use to get more insight into your delivery performance.


1. When you release your app, you’ll now see its expected app size and update size at the point of release creation, so you can determine if the size change from the previous release is acceptable.

Screenshot of Google Play Console showing expected app size and update size
Get the expected app size and update size when you create a new release.

2. If you use advanced Play delivery tools, such as Play Asset Delivery or Play Feature Delivery, detailed information about how these are shipped to users are now available on the Statistics page and in the Delivery tab in App bundle explorer. Understanding your feature modules and asset packs usage can help you make better decisions about further modularization and uncover usage patterns across your users.

Screenshot of the Devliery tab in the App bundle explorer page in Play Console
Get detailed information about how your feature modules are shipped to users in the Delivery tab in the App bundle explorer page in Play Console.

Screenshot of performance metrics on the Statistics page in Play Console
See per module performance metrics on the Statistics page in Play Console.


3. When analyzing your existing release, you can now see how many users are on it to help you assess the “freshness” of your install base and how quickly users migrate to new releases. To improve your update rate, consider using the In-app updates API.

Screenshot of the Release Summary showing percentage of install base on this release in Releases Overview in Play Console
Know how many users are on your existing release and how quickly users migrate to new releases.

4. For a deeper dive into your individual app version performance, you can find information about your download size per device model, most common update sizes, and install base in App bundle explorer.

Screenshot of App bundle explorer page in Play Console
Evaluate device-specific bundle download size and install base on the App bundle explorer page.

5. All of these features are also available in your App Dashboard, where you can track these measurements over time alongside other app metrics.

Screenshot of App bundle explorer page in Play Console
Monitor these new delivery metrics on your App Dashboard.

We hope these changes will help you make more informed decisions about your app development and provide you with a detailed view of how your app is being delivered to end user devices.


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#WeArePlay | Meet app founders helping people around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

There are millions of apps available on Google Play, created by thousands of founders across the world. Each single app is unique and special in its own right, but they all have one thing in common - their purpose is to help. From helping motorhome enthusiasts find somewhere to camp, small business owners manage their finances or waste pickers make a reliable income - in this latest batch of #WeArePlay stories, we celebrate app founders who are helping people across the world in extraordinarily different ways.

First we begin with Cristian. Originally from Villa Rica in southern Chile, he made his family very proud by being the first to go to university. During his studies in Santiago, he learned about the local waste pickers – people who make an income by searching through trash cans and finding valuable materials to sell. Despite his mother’s wishes, he was so motivated to help them that he dropped out of university and dedicated all his time to creating an app. Reciclapp works by helping waste pickers connect with local businesses, so they can collect resellable materials directly from them. So far, the app has helped waste pickers across the city save time and guarantee a more reliable income. As Cristian has grown his company to a team of 12 and expanded into Mexico, his mother is now very proud of his bravery and success.

Next, Kennedy and Duke. When they were children, their father’s business sadly failed because managing his finances and tracking spending was too hard. Years later, after a successful career abroad in tech, Kennedy decided it was time to return to his homeland of Nigeria and build his own company. Inspired by his father’s struggle, he partnered with brother Duke and travelled across the country to interview other business owners about their financial struggles. Using this research, they created Kippa - the app simplifies bookkeeping to make sending invoices, storing receipts and setting up a bank account easy. It’s now used by over half a million businesses in Nigeria, as Kennedy mentions “without Google Play, we couldn't help as many business owners”.

To round up today, Gijs and Eefje. The couple adore renting campervans and travelling around to explore the natural beauty of Europe, but they always seemed to struggle with one thing - easily finding places to stay. Feeling like nothing out there could help them, they decided to give app development a go and create Campy. The app works as a digital camping encyclopaedia: helping like-minded campervan enthusiasts discover the perfect spots to set up camp, plan their trips and meet others who love the outdoors. A few years after Campy launched, Gijs and Eefje now have 2 little girls to bring on their big adventures, and are elated with the feedback they have received - “it never ceases to amaze me what a tiny app can do for so many people”.

Check out all the stories from around the world at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for more coming soon.


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#WeArePlay | Meet app founders helping people around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

There are millions of apps available on Google Play, created by thousands of founders across the world. Each single app is unique and special in its own right, but they all have one thing in common - their purpose is to help. From helping motorhome enthusiasts find somewhere to camp, small business owners manage their finances or waste pickers make a reliable income - in this latest batch of #WeArePlay stories, we celebrate app founders who are helping people across the world in extraordinarily different ways.

First we begin with Cristian. Originally from Villa Rica in southern Chile, he made his family very proud by being the first to go to university. During his studies in Santiago, he learned about the local waste pickers – people who make an income by searching through trash cans and finding valuable materials to sell. Despite his mother’s wishes, he was so motivated to help them that he dropped out of university and dedicated all his time to creating an app. Reciclapp works by helping waste pickers connect with local businesses, so they can collect resellable materials directly from them. So far, the app has helped waste pickers across the city save time and guarantee a more reliable income. As Cristian has grown his company to a team of 12 and expanded into Mexico, his mother is now very proud of his bravery and success.

Next, Kennedy and Duke. When they were children, their father’s business sadly failed because managing his finances and tracking spending was too hard. Years later, after a successful career abroad in tech, Kennedy decided it was time to return to his homeland of Nigeria and build his own company. Inspired by his father’s struggle, he partnered with brother Duke and travelled across the country to interview other business owners about their financial struggles. Using this research, they created Kippa - the app simplifies bookkeeping to make sending invoices, storing receipts and setting up a bank account easy. It’s now used by over half a million businesses in Nigeria, as Kennedy mentions “without Google Play, we couldn't help as many business owners”.

To round up today, Gijs and Eefje. The couple adore renting campervans and travelling around to explore the natural beauty of Europe, but they always seemed to struggle with one thing - easily finding places to stay. Feeling like nothing out there could help them, they decided to give app development a go and create Campy. The app works as a digital camping encyclopaedia: helping like-minded campervan enthusiasts discover the perfect spots to set up camp, plan their trips and meet others who love the outdoors. A few years after Campy launched, Gijs and Eefje now have 2 little girls to bring on their big adventures, and are elated with the feedback they have received - “it never ceases to amaze me what a tiny app can do for so many people”.

Check out all the stories from around the world at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for more coming soon.


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Helping users discover apps for all their devices from their phone

Posted by Marcus Leal, Product Manager, Google Play

Over the years, Android has evolved to support more devices such as watches, tablets, TVs, and even cars. Apps and games are a critical part of this ecosystem as they power many of the unique digital experiences that we all enjoy and rely on. As a way to make it easier for users to find your great apps across all Android devices, we are making changes to the Google Play Store, enabling users to more easily discover and install apps on other devices directly from their phone.

Updates to the Google Play Store phone app

We recently introduced three updates to the Play Store phone app that will help your users’ devices work better together: homepages for non-phone devices, a device search filter, and the ability to remotely install an app to another device.

Homepages for other devices

Users with a Wear OS watch, Android TV OS, or car with Android Automotive can navigate to the Play Store “Other devices” page on their phone app to see app and game recommendations, and editorials tailored to their non-phone devices.

  

Users can go to the “Other devices” page to get recommendations of apps and games optimized for non-phone devices.

Search device filters

Users can also find apps and games for their devices with the new device filter on the Play Store search page. Using the filter, the search results will only include apps and games that are compatible with their selected device.

Users can use the device filters to easily find apps and games optimized for their Wear watch, Android TV, or Android Auto-enabled devices.

Remote install to other devices

After finding the right app or game for their device, users can install it remotely from their phone by selecting the target device and clicking the install button.


 
Users can remotely install apps and games to their other devices from the Play Store on their phone.

Changes to the Play Store website

We also recently launched a major redesign of the Play Store website. In addition to simplifying navigation, improving accessibility, and showcasing new and more useful information, the new website makes it easier for users to discover and manage their apps and games across all their devices. This means that users can access the Play Store website on their computer or non-Android phone to browse, search, and remotely install apps and games to all of their Android devices.

Users can access the Play Store website on their computer or non-Android phone to browse, search, and remotely install your apps and games to their Android devices.

These changes were designed to give developers new opportunities to showcase their multi-device app experiences, driving more engagement across the Android ecosystem.




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