Tag Archives: android developers

Celebrating the Developers Behind the Best Apps and Games of 2020

Posted by Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Business Development, Games & Applications

Today, we announced Google Play’s annual Best of 2020 awards, highlighting the year’s best apps, games and digital content. None of this would be possible without the developers that created the amazing content that made a profound impact on us in 2020, or should we say a Genshin Impact … From miHoYo Limited to Loona Inc, the makers behind your favorite apps and games were unafraid to experiment, challenge the status quo, and design incredible experiences we never thought possible.

Check out the full rundown of the developers behind the best apps and games of 2020 in the U.S. on Google Play:

Best App of 2020

Best Personal Growth Apps

Best Hidden Gem Apps

Best Everyday Essential Apps

Best Apps for Good

Best Apps for Fun

Best Game of 2020

Best Indie Games

Best Casual Games

Best Innovative Games

Best Competitive Games

Tips for getting your app approved for background location access

Posted by Krish Vitaldevara, Director of Product Management Trust & Safety, Google Play

Graphic of phone with googleplay logo and icons to the left

When it comes to privacy, we are committed to giving users control and transparency over data access. Users consistently tell us that they want more control over their location data, so earlier this year we announced a few privacy improvements, such as updates to Google Play’s Location Permissions policy and enhancements to location permission controls in Android 11.

To help prevent unnecessary access to background location, the updated policy allows access only if it’s critical to the app’s core functionality and provides clear user benefit. We found that many apps that requested background location don’t actually need it. Removing or changing it to foreground can help apps be battery-efficient and avoid poor app ratings when users don’t want to share their location.

If your app uses background location data, you must submit a form for review and receive approval by January 18, 2021 so your apps can stay on Google Play. Existing apps first published before April 16, 2020 have until March 29, 2021 to comply.

Tips to get approved

  • If your app has multiple features that use background location, choose the one that provides the most user benefit. Describe in detail why background (and not foreground) location is needed and how it is used. Learn more
  • You must include a short video that shows how users will encounter your prominent disclosure, location-based feature and enable it in-app. If your video doesn’t show this or we can’t access the link, your request won’t be approved. We recommend that you upload it to YouTube or Google Drive.
  • Remember to include a prominent in-app disclosure to explain to users what data is used and how. Learn more
  • Ensure your privacy policy is clearly labeled and includes details on location data usage. Learn more

Resources to help

We want to help you through this process, so we’ve created this video and free training courses in Google Play Academy to use as a reference when you’re making any necessary app updates. You can also check out these best privacy practices and technical details to help identify possible background location usage in your code.

Thank you for continuing to partner with us to make Google Play a trustworthy platform for you and your users.

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Further tales from the leading edge and beyond: more Apps, Games, & Insights podcast episodes

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Global Marketing, Platforms & Ecosystems

Google Play image

We are launching the second series of the Apps, Games, & Insights podcast.

Over the summer, we teamed up with a new group of leading industry insiders and experts to bring you 8 new podcast episodes over the next couple of months. We are bringing you their exceptional business stories, experiences and discussion on some of the latest big questions in the apps and games industry.

We are joined again by your hosts—Tamzin Taylor, who heads up Apps & Games Business Development for Google Play in Western Europe, and Dirk Primbs, who leads the Ecosystem Developer Relations team in Europe— and you can find out who they have been cajoling and corralling in the new series, below.

In the first series, the guests covered topics ranging from responsible growth and building for the long term, through advice from mergers and acquisitions and venture capital experts, to hot topics such as privacy and accessibility.

Apps, Games, & Insights podcast series 2 brings you a similarly diverse range of insights, stories, and learnings, and without further ado, get a sneak peek as to what we have lined up...

We kickoff with Elliott Rayner, Head Of Product Marketing, and John Quintana, Head of Guided Learning Experiences, from Babbel the online language learning company. Here in episode 9 we talk about how the new normal is disrupting the delivery of all types of education. Elliott and John discuss how Babbel is transforming and adapting and has been "thinking big" about the future of education: ultimately can apps take the place of traditional classroom education?

Most of us are very aware how critical environmental change is, but how do we raise awareness to fight climate change through our businesses? In episode 10 we are joined by Jennifer Estaris, Games Director at SYBO Games and Deborah Mensah-Bonsu, Founder of Games for Good and formerly at Space Ape Games, to learn how others are changing the game. In the recent Green Game Jam, 11 game studios came together to find innovative and engaging ways to educate and empower players about climate change through games. Jennifer and Deborah discuss how they ensured that the ideas were more than just another collection of tips for better recycling, and then pulled together a jam to bring great minds together and actualise change.

We also explore how to be successful with 4x strategy games—turn-based and real-time strategy games where you build an empire—in episode 11. We’re joined by David Eckleberry, General Manager and Vice President at Scopely, and Howard Chen, Google Play Growth Consultant. We hear how Star Trek Fleet Command has successfully built it’s loyal player base and the stories that bring to life the learnings about player affinity, KPI growth, comparative analysis with other game genres, and more.

With literally thousands of languages to choose from, language learning apps are in a unique position to reflect humanity’s diversity. The team at Drops have taken this opportunity by incorporating several indigenous languages into their app portfolio. So, while supporting the usual suspects of popular languages, users of Drops can also learn Hawaiian, Maori (from New Zealand), and Innu (from Japan) among others. In episode 12, we talk with Drops CEO and Co-Founder, Daniel Farkas and Chief Customer Officer, Drew Banks about how they actively foster diversity and inclusion in their product and company.

Have you ever wondered what goes behind the scenes to help you order your favourite foods from delivery apps? Delivering a quality app is essential to the success of your business, in both acquiring and retaining users. In episode 13, we’re joined by Maria Neumayer, Staff Software Engineer, at food delivery service Deliveroo and Shobhit Chugh, Product Manager, Firebase to talk about the practical steps you can take to design quality into an app or game. Discover and rectify quality problems in testing and production and hear Maria’s insights into how Deliveroo has adapted to the new normal.

Mobile gaming offers developers of PC and console games a significant opportunity. By going mobile, game developers can expand their player base and drive retention by providing a platform for players to stay engaged while they’re on the move. Jen Donahoe, Marketing and Growth lead for TeamFight Tactics at Riot Games joins us in episode 14 to discuss the challenges and opportunities they had in taking their games mobile.

What makes retention so critical to the success of a business over other measures, and how do you optimize this strategy? We speak to Marcus Gners, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder at health and fitness app developer Lifesum to hear how about the models they use and how they approach habitual usage. In episode 15, alongside Marcus, we are joined by best-selling author of “Hooked” and “Indistractable,” Nir Eyal, to explore the behavior apps should foster to drive retention, and how to measure this effectively.

So as to not give the whole game away, we are keeping the details of our final episode under wraps, so keep an eye out for more details shortly.

The new episodes of the Apps, Games, & Insights podcast are sure to spark the interest of business and app or gaming enthusiasts, and developers, who want to get the inside scoop from industry experts on business strategies and their success stories, and how to create successful apps and games businesses in these rapidly changing times. We look forward to you joining us on this journey.

How to stay tuned in

To find out more about what’s coming, check out our Apps, Games, & Insights podcast homepage and find links to all the latest episodes.

Subscribe and listen to our first episode here, or on your favorite podcast platform including Google Podcasts, Spotify, Apple, Libsyn, Pocket Casts and Overcast, Deezer, and iHeartRadio.

Keep an eye out on @GooglePlayDev and @AndroidDev on Twitter where we will be announcing the launch of the new episodes each week.

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Optimize your app publishing process with new Google Play Console features

Steve Suppe, Product Manager, Google Play

Publishing your app or game is one of the most important moments in your app’s lifecycle. You want everything to go smoothly, from making sure the production release is stable, to getting test releases out quickly, to getting your marketing message just right.

That’s why visibility is key. Knowing when your app is in review, when it’s been approved, and when it can go live on Google Play helps you set your own schedule.

Now, with two new features in the new Google Play Console, you can do just that. The Publishing overview page helps you better understand your publishing process and Managed publishing gives you better control of when your app updates go live on Google Play. When the new Play Console rolls out to everyone starting November 2, these features will be the recommended way to control your release timing, so let’s take a closer look.

Publishing overview

The new Publishing overview page displays all your recent changes to your releases, store listings, and more, including those that are currently being reviewed or processed by Google Play. For those of you with larger teams, this means you can now coordinate all your changes in one place and publish everything at the same time.

Unlike the developer activity log, the Publishing overview only shows changes that will be visible on Google Play, or what you’ve told us about how we should consider and review your app.

The “Changes in review” section lets you quickly see changes
that have not been published yet.

These changes are organized by the type of change or release track so it’s easy to understand at a glance.

Managed publishing

Many of you may be familiar with Timed publishing in the old Play Console. In the new Play Console, we’ve replaced Timed publishing with Managed publishing, to give you a clearer and more predictable publishing experience.


When you enable Managed publishing, approved changes will only go live when you decide instead of automatically after review and processing. This allows you to submit changes long before your intended release date, giving yourself time to review or make changes without sacrificing control over your publishing date.

See which changes have been reviewed and approved

When Managed publishing is on, the Publishing overview page contains two sections: one that shows which changes have been approved and are ready to publish, and another that shows changes that are still in review.

We’ve also made some improvements that many of you have been asking for:

  • You can now publish your approved changes even if other changes are still in review. Previously, Timed publishing did not allow you to make any changes live until all changes had been approved.
  • You can turn Managed publishing on or off at any time, even if there are changes in review or ready to publish. You no longer have to wait for pending reviews before you can use Managed publishing.

See if Managed publishing is turned in the left-hand navigation menu

Soon, you’ll be able to see the Managed publishing icon in the left-hand nav next to Publishing overview. This way, you can tell Managed publishing is on from anywhere in the Play Console.

To learn more about publishing with the new Play Console, including scenarios when these features would be most useful, check out this course from Play Academy. And if you haven’t already, update to the new Play Console at play.google.com/console and give Managed publishing a try.

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All developers will get the new Google Play Console on November 2, 2020

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play Console

We hope you’re enjoying the new Google Play Console. With over 350,000 people now using it as their default experience and thousands more providing feedback, the new Play Console is ready to come out of beta. Thank you to everyone who has helped to get it here. This means that the old Play Console will be discontinued starting November 2, 2020. After this date, you’ll be automatically directed to the new Play Console when you log into your account.

If you haven't tried it already, we recommend that you switch to the new version now. To get started, visit play.google.com/console.

The new Play Console’s responsive design means that you can use it across all of your devices. The new navigation makes it easier to find and understand important features, and we’ve added areas to help you better understand your release status, acquisition performance, and guidance on policy changes.

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve already made a lot of improvements:

  • We reorganized the releases area of the navigation. Production is now at the top level, and we've grouped all testing tracks together. Internal app sharing has moved to Setup.
  • Speed and performance on different browsers have increased, and we’ve made UI tweaks such as making text boxes resizable, introducing unread notices for messages, and refining headers on mobile so they use space more efficiently.
  • We launched Inbox, your personalized messaging area featuring helpful information, policy updates, feature recommendations, and more.
  • The new Publishing overview page lets you see what changes are in review. Managed publishing gives you control over your launch by allowing you to decide when approved changes are actually published.
  • Acquisition reports have been completely overhauled to help you understand your performance over time. This includes discontinuing some cohort-based metrics. These will not be available in the new console. If you want to keep a record of this data, please download it from the old Play Console before November 2. Find out more
  • You can still link to your Google Ads account for conversion tracking and remarketing lists, but Google Ads campaign reporting and account notifications will now be available exclusively in Google Ads.
  • You can now search across Play Console, making it easier to find pages and features quickly.
  • And lastly, we announced that later this year, all Play Console users will need to use 2-Step Verification.

To learn more about the new Play Console, you can:

  • Get a high-level overview of what’s new in this blog post.
  • Watch these videos for more in-depth information about the biggest changes.
  • Take a course on the Academy for App Success to become an expert on the new experience.
  • Dive into key features and find supporting information in the new education pages.

Thank you for being a part of our community, and we hope you enjoy the new Play Console!

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All developers will get the new Google Play Console on November 2, 2020

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play Console

We hope you’re enjoying the new Google Play Console. With over 350,000 people now using it as their default experience and thousands more providing feedback, the new Play Console is ready to come out of beta. Thank you to everyone who has helped to get it here. This means that the old Play Console will be discontinued starting November 2, 2020. After this date, you’ll be automatically directed to the new Play Console when you log into your account.

If you haven't tried it already, we recommend that you switch to the new version now. To get started, visit play.google.com/console.

The new Play Console’s responsive design means that you can use it across all of your devices. The new navigation makes it easier to find and understand important features, and we’ve added areas to help you better understand your release status, acquisition performance, and guidance on policy changes.

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve already made a lot of improvements:

  • We reorganized the releases area of the navigation. Production is now at the top level, and we've grouped all testing tracks together. Internal app sharing has moved to Setup.
  • Speed and performance on different browsers have increased, and we’ve made UI tweaks such as making text boxes resizable, introducing unread notices for messages, and refining headers on mobile so they use space more efficiently.
  • We launched Inbox, your personalized messaging area featuring helpful information, policy updates, feature recommendations, and more.
  • The new Publishing overview page lets you see what changes are in review. Managed publishing gives you control over your launch by allowing you to decide when approved changes are actually published.
  • Acquisition reports have been completely overhauled to help you understand your performance over time. This includes discontinuing some cohort-based metrics. These will not be available in the new console. If you want to keep a record of this data, please download it from the old Play Console before November 2. Find out more
  • You can still link to your Google Ads account for conversion tracking and remarketing lists, but Google Ads campaign reporting and account notifications will now be available exclusively in Google Ads.
  • You can now search across Play Console, making it easier to find pages and features quickly.
  • And lastly, we announced that later this year, all Play Console users will need to use 2-Step Verification.

To learn more about the new Play Console, you can:

  • Get a high-level overview of what’s new in this blog post.
  • Watch these videos for more in-depth information about the biggest changes.
  • Take a course on the Academy for App Success to become an expert on the new experience.
  • Dive into key features and find supporting information in the new education pages.

Thank you for being a part of our community, and we hope you enjoy the new Play Console!

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What’s new for Android game developers: August update

Posted by Greg Hartrell, Head of Product Management, Games on Android & Google Play

Android

Welcome to our latest Android games update and the start of our #11WeeksOfAndroid week focused on games, media and 5G. With all of your interest and feedback in our developer previews, tools and services, we have lots to share in our ongoing efforts to help you better understand your game’s performance, expand your reach to more devices and new audiences, and support your go-to-market with Google Play.

Get the latest updates below and follow us at @AndroidDev for additional games resources and more.

Android tools for mobile game development

  • Android Studio 4.1: We've enhanced the CPU Profiler to expose more data with an improved UI, and we've added memory visualization, startup profiling capabilities, and sampling rate configuration to our Native Memory Profiler. Additionally, you can now open the Android Studio Profilers in a standalone UI. Checkout the System Trace and Native Memory blog posts for more details, and update Android Studio today for better profiling.
  • Android Game Development Extension: For developers building games on multiple platforms with C/C++, we continue to invest in our extension for Visual Studio, including adding support for Visual Studio 2019 and launching standalone Android Studio Profilers. Sign up for the developer preview to integrate with your Visual Studio workflow.
  • Android GPU Inspector: Look into the GPU of Android devices to better understand the bottlenecks and utilize the insights to optimize the graphical performance of your game experiences. Sign up for the developer preview and stay tuned for our upcoming open beta.

Reach more devices and users

  • Android Performance Tuner: Deliver higher quality game experiences to more Android users with less effort. Measure your frame rate performance and graphical fidelity and optimise between them to achieve stable frame rates at scale across the whole Android device ecosystem. Integrate the Unity plug-in or do a custom integration. Learn more in our new session.
  • Android Game SDK: Achievieving smoother frame rates and managing input latency on Android has become even easier! Now that the Game SDK is part of Jetpack, it’s simple to integrate our gaming libraries, such as the Frame Pacing API or the Android Performance Tuner, into your game. Grab the SDK or integrate it now through Jetpack.
  • Play Asset Delivery: Improve your user experience while reducing delivery costs and the size of your game with Play Asset Delivery’s flexible delivery modes, auto-updates and delta patching. Gameloft used PAD to improve user retention, resulting in 10% more new players than with their previous asset delivery system. App bundle format will be required for all new apps starting August 2021. As part of this, we will deprecate legacy APK expansion files (OBBs), making Play Asset Delivery the standard option for publishing games over 150MB.
  • Protect game integrity and fairness with Google Play tools: Protect your game, players, and business by reducing costs fighting monetization and distribution abuse. Some partners have seen up to a 40% decrease in potential hacks and up to a 30% decrease in fraudulent purchase attempts using our integrity and commerce APIs. Express interest in the automatic integrity protection EAP.

Boost your go-to-market

  • Play Games Services - Friends: Now in open beta, help players easily find and play with friends across Android games. Millions of players have a new platform-level friends list that you can access to bootstrap and enhance your in-game friend networks and have your games surfaced in new clusters in the Play Games app. Start using Google Play Games Services - Friends in your game today.
  • Pre-registration: Boost early installs with pre-registration and day 1 auto install. Early experiments show a +20% increase in day 1 installs when using this new feature. We have also optimized our day 1 notifications to pre-registered users. Try out the new pre-registration menu in the Play Developer Console to access this feature.
  • Play store updates: We’re updating games home with a much greater visual experience, showcasing rich game graphics and engaging videos. This provides a more arcade-like browse experience helping users discover new games that match what they like to play. Learn how to optimize your store listing page with the best quality assets.
  • In-app reviews: Give users the ability to leave a review from within your game, without heading back to the app details page, using our new in-app review API, part of the Play Core Library. Learn more in our recent blog post.

Check out d.android.com/games to learn about these tools and more, and stay up to date by signing up for the games quarterly newsletter.


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Leverage the In-App Review API for your Google Play reviews

Posted by Scott Lin, Product Manager, Google Play

illustration of girl with starred review

For many developers, ratings and reviews are an important touchpoint with users. Millions of reviews are left on Google Play every day, offering developers valuable insight on what users love and what they want improved. Users also rely on ratings and reviews to help them decide which apps and games are right for them.

Over the past two years, Google Play has launched various features to make it easier for users to leave reviews, as well as for developers to interact and respond to them. For example, users are now able to leave reviews from the Google Play homepage. We also launched the Reviews page under My Apps & Games, which gives users a centralized place to leave and manage reviews.

But one of the most requested features from developers has been to give users the ability to leave a review from within the app, without heading back to the App Details page. So today, we’re pleased to launch the new in-app review API to address that need.

Ask for a review at just the right time

The API lets developers choose when to prompt users to write reviews within the app experience. We believe the best time to prompt your users is when they have used the app enough to be able to provide thorough and useful feedback. However, be sure not to interrupt them in the middle of a task or when their attention is needed, as the review flow will take over the action on the screen.

User ratings for app image

Users can now give ratings and reviews within your app.

The in-app review API supports both public and private reviews for when your app is in beta.

The review API is part of the Play Core Library, which is distributed for Java/Kotlin, C++, and Unity. It offers a lightweight API that allows apps to request a review and launch the review flow without users leaving the app.

The integration consists of four main steps:

  1. Define the conditions and best place to ask for a review
  2. Request the review flow to the API
  3. Launch the review at an appropriate moment
  4. Continue the flow after the review is completed

Whether the user leaves a review or not, the app must continue without altering the user flow. The in-app review API is designed to be seamless for users.

You can see the in-app review API in action in our newly published sample, which showcases calling the API through the Play Core Kotlin extensions (KTX) library, alongside other Play Core APIs such as in-app updates and on-demand feature modules installation.

Gathering the best feedback

The API will make it much easier for users to share valuable insights about your app.

Here’s what some of our partners said during the early-access program:

Calm logo
“It was quick and easy to integrate with the new In-App Review API changes, and we saw an almost immediate increase in positive ratings and reviews after releasing those changes.”

- Chris Scoville, Engineering Manager at Calm



Duolingo logo
“The in-app review API allows our customers to rate without leaving the application. Our 5-star ratings since implementing the API has increased by 4x.”

- Nathaniel Khuana, Technical Architect, Tokopedia



Traveloka logo
"We saw our all-time highest rating just a week after we implemented in-app reviews."

- Welly Chandra, Associate Product Manager at Traveloka







Because the best feedback is honest and unbiased, we designed the API to be self-contained and not require additional prompting other than to invoke the API. We’ve also placed cap limits to ensure that users won’t be prompted excessively should they choose not to leave a review.

We encourage developers to explore integrating the in-app review API as it will unlock the type of feedback that only your dedicated users can provide. And remember, once you receive those reviews, there are a multitude of ratings and reviews tools available to you on the Google Play Console to help you analyze the reviews and respond to users' concerns directly.

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Leverage the In-App Review API for your Google Play reviews

Posted by Scott Lin, Product Manager, Google Play

illustration of girl with starred review

For many developers, ratings and reviews are an important touchpoint with users. Millions of reviews are left on Google Play every day, offering developers valuable insight on what users love and what they want improved. Users also rely on ratings and reviews to help them decide which apps and games are right for them.

Over the past two years, Google Play has launched various features to make it easier for users to leave reviews, as well as for developers to interact and respond to them. For example, users are now able to leave reviews from the Google Play homepage. We also launched the Reviews page under My Apps & Games, which gives users a centralized place to leave and manage reviews.

But one of the most requested features from developers has been to give users the ability to leave a review from within the app, without heading back to the App Details page. So today, we’re pleased to launch the new in-app review API to address that need.

Ask for a review at just the right time

The API lets developers choose when to prompt users to write reviews within the app experience. We believe the best time to prompt your users is when they have used the app enough to be able to provide thorough and useful feedback. However, be sure not to interrupt them in the middle of a task or when their attention is needed, as the review flow will take over the action on the screen.

User ratings for app image

Users can now give ratings and reviews within your app.

The in-app review API supports both public and private reviews for when your app is in beta.

The review API is part of the Play Core Library, which is distributed for Java/Kotlin, C++, and Unity. It offers a lightweight API that allows apps to request a review and launch the review flow without users leaving the app.

The integration consists of four main steps:

  1. Define the conditions and best place to ask for a review
  2. Request the review flow to the API
  3. Launch the review at an appropriate moment
  4. Continue the flow after the review is completed

Whether the user leaves a review or not, the app must continue without altering the user flow. The in-app review API is designed to be seamless for users.

You can see the in-app review API in action in our newly published sample, which showcases calling the API through the Play Core Kotlin extensions (KTX) library, alongside other Play Core APIs such as in-app updates and on-demand feature modules installation.

Gathering the best feedback

The API will make it much easier for users to share valuable insights about your app.

Here’s what some of our partners said during the early-access program:

Calm logo
“It was quick and easy to integrate with the new In-App Review API changes, and we saw an almost immediate increase in positive ratings and reviews after releasing those changes.”

- Chris Scoville, Engineering Manager at Calm



Duolingo logo
“The in-app review API allows our customers to rate without leaving the application. Our 5-star ratings since implementing the API has increased by 4x.”

- Nathaniel Khuana, Technical Architect, Tokopedia



Traveloka logo
"We saw our all-time highest rating just a week after we implemented in-app reviews."

- Welly Chandra, Associate Product Manager at Traveloka







Because the best feedback is honest and unbiased, we designed the API to be self-contained and not require additional prompting other than to invoke the API. We’ve also placed cap limits to ensure that users won’t be prompted excessively should they choose not to leave a review.

We encourage developers to explore integrating the in-app review API as it will unlock the type of feedback that only your dedicated users can provide. And remember, once you receive those reviews, there are a multitude of ratings and reviews tools available to you on the Google Play Console to help you analyze the reviews and respond to users' concerns directly.

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Recent Android App Bundle improvements and timeline for new apps on Google Play

Posted by Posted by Dom Elliott and Yafit Becher, Product Managers at Google Play

Google
Android

In a little over two years, the Android App Bundle has become the gold standard for publishing on Google Play. Over 600,000 apps and games currently use the app bundle in production, representing over 40% of all releases on Google Play. App bundles are used by 50% of the top developers on Google Play — such as Adobe, which used app bundles to reduce the size of Adobe Acrobat Reader by 20%.

We recently launched Play Asset Delivery (PAD), bringing the great benefits of app bundles to games and allowing developers to improve the user experience while cutting delivery costs and reducing the size of their games. Gameloft used PAD to improve user retention, resulting in 10% more new players than with their previous asset delivery system.

For those of you making the switch, we’ve published some FAQs on Play App Signing — required for app bundles — as well as guidance on how to test your app bundle. Read on to find out more about the recent improvements we’ve made to developing, testing, and publishing with app bundles.

Play Feature Delivery

The app bundle enables modular app development using dynamic feature modules with a range of customizable delivery options. It’s now possible to shrink resources in dynamic feature modules as well as your base module when building modular apps. This long-requested feature can result in significantly greater size reduction of your apps. The feature is available from Android Studio 4.2, currently in Canary, under the experimental flag: android.experimental.enableNewResourceShrinker=true.

By default, install time modules are now automatically fused when app bundles are processed into distribution APKs (starting in bundletool 1.0.0). This means you can separate your app into modules during development while reducing the number of APKs distributed to each device, which will speed up your app’s download and installation. You can choose to set a “removable flag” for install-time modules to prevent fusing, which allows you to uninstall a module on the device after it’s been used. It’s a good idea to remove large modules once they’re no longer needed — reducing the size of your app can make it less likely to be uninstalled.

Feature-to-feature dependency is now stable in Android Studio 4.0, so you can specify that a dynamic feature module depends on another feature module. Being able to define this relationship ensures that your app has the required modules to unlock additional functionality, resulting in fewer requests and easier modularization of your app.

We know that it is critical for you to test your app delivery and get the same experience as your users would in the wild. Internal app sharing lets you upload test builds to Play and get a sharable link to download your app. When downloading your app from this link, you get an identical binary as would be served to users once your app is released to Play.

Play Asset Delivery

Play Asset Delivery extends the app bundle format, allowing you to package up to 2GB of game assets alongside the binary in a single artifact published on Google Play. PAD lets games larger than 150MB replace the legacy expansion files (OBBs) and rely on Play to keep assets up to date, just like you do with your game binary. It also takes care of compression and delta patching, minimizing the size of the download and getting your game to update faster.

Google

The contents of an Android App Bundle with one base module, two dynamic feature modules, and two asset packs.

You can then choose one of three delivery modes, depending on when you want those assets to be served to users: upfront, as part of the initial game installation; on-demand, so assets will be delivered only upon request; or fast-follow, which will trigger an additional download immediately after the game installation completes, independently of the user opening the app. Fast-follow lets you minimize time to first interaction while getting assets to users as quickly as possible.

In the coming months, we’ll release texture compression format targeting, which will allow you to include multiple texture compression format assets and rely on us to deliver them to the most advanced format supported by the requesting device.

Learn more in this session from our Game Developer Summit and check out the documentation to see integration options for Unity, Unreal Engine, Gradle, Native, and Java support.

Google Play’s best-in-class distribution

Google Play delivers billions of apps, games, updates, and dynamic feature modules every month to Android users on thousands of device types around the world. We invest a lot of time and energy into making sure your content is delivered to users as seamlessly and efficiently as possible while hiding the complexity from the user experience.

For example, we recently upgraded the download service Google Play uses. This change alone has sped up the installation of app bundle apps by an average of 6% and increased install success globally by 1%, resulting in millions more new installs for developers every week.

We’re also rolling out multiple improvements to dynamic feature module distribution, such as allowing them to be installed when your app is VISIBLE or higher, lowering the free storage threshold that triggers insufficient storage errors, and removing user confirmation for large dynamic features over Wi-Fi. This alone has resulted in 12% more successful deferred module downloads. Apps using dynamic features will benefit from these changes automatically.

Requirement for new apps in the second half of 2021

We’re continuing to make app bundles a better publishing format than APKs on Google Play. For example, the new app bundle explorer lets you manage all your app bundles in one place. You can download and attest the exact APKs that Play generates for delivery, as well as a signed, universal APK (a single, installable APK that includes all code and resources needed for supported devices) that you can use on other distribution channels.

We’ve been thrilled to see the app bundle embraced by the app and game ecosystem, and we’re excited to continue to improve it. As we announced in the Android 11 event, to help us invest in future improvements, we intend to require new apps and games to publish with the Android App Bundle on Google Play in the second half of 2021. In the same timeframe, we will deprecate legacy APK expansion files (OBBs), making Play Asset Delivery the standard option for publishing games over 150MB. We will also require instant experiences to be published via instant-enabled app bundles, deprecating the legacy instant app ZIP format.

Thank you to everyone who has already made the switch to the Android App Bundle, and a special thanks to those of you who’ve shared your feedback. Your comments help us shape the future of app bundles and improve the technology for everyone, so please continue to let us know what you think.


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