Tag Archives: Google Play

Supporting and rewarding great Apps and Games on Google Play

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Group Product Manager, Google Play

Supporting and rewarding great Apps and Games on Google Play

At Google Play, our mission is to facilitate relationships between Android users and app and game developers, enabling tens of thousands of businesses worldwide to grow and thrive in the mobile ecosystem. Every day, together, we help billions of people discover engaging, helpful, and enriching experiences on their devices, which is why we care so deeply about the quality of the experience we offer on the Play Store.

To do that, we’re constantly developing new ways to promote and support high-quality titles throughout the entire lifecycle, from acquisition and engagement to retention and reacquisition. 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. These changes are designed to help you reach more people, improve discovery of higher-quality titles, and optimize your presence for the greatest possible impact.

To help you navigate these updates, we’re sharing our key thinking and direction early, and launching new features to help power your growth across your users’ lifecycle with you. So read on!

Powering developer success across the lifecycle

As a partner, we’re focused on helping developers succeed. In today's app ecosystem, where loyalty and re-engagement are more top of mind than ever before, we’re creating even more opportunities for developers to use our surfaces to not only find first-time users but also to engage, and re-acquire them. 

For select titles, LiveOps is a key channel to reach users directly on Google Play with great offers, launches, and events. LiveOps has helped titles like Rise of Kingdoms, Paramount+, and MyFitnessPal add exciting new content that inspire discovery, re-engagement, and monetization. On average, developers using LiveOps drive +3.6% increase in revenue and a +5.1% increase in 28DAU versus similar titles who don’t. Individual events are already garnering compelling uplifts from Play.

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Play data: additional growth by a real LiveOp
 Analysis: 90th percentile of over 70 recently run liveOps vs. control groups with 0.9 confidence interval

To accelerate this performance, over the coming months we’re expanding how your content is used on Google Play by creating new high-impact placements and formats. It will become deeply integrated into users’ experiences, from their homepages, through search and discovery, in your title’s listings, and directly into your apps via deep links.
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New content formats will help users discover and rediscover high-quality content to enjoy. Final design may vary.

To help you take full advantage of the opportunity that content on Play presents, we’re making key changes in Play Console. These start with the renaming of LiveOps to “Promotional Content.” This reflects the breadth of content you can submit to Play today, and new content types we’ll be adding over time. We’ve also updated format guidelines, priority quotas, and now enable bulk data downloads. If you're one of the thousands of titles that already use Promotional Content, look for messages in your Play Console Inbox to find out more. We're looking to expand access to even more apps and games next year.

These changes bring even more opportunities to leverage your events to grow your active audience and revenue. Visibility and promotion across Play are also dependent on the quality of your title and individual content. So make sure you check our updated content guidelines and recommendations.

Driving reacquisitions

Another key part of the lifecycle is bringing back users who’ve tried your title before. As mobile ecosystems continue to mature and developers continue to invest for the long-term, this growth channel is only getting more important.

That’s why we’re introducing Churned-user Custom Store Listings. These enable you to tell a different story to users on Play who’ve tried but uninstalled your apps or games before. Because our store listings power experiences like the overlay you see when interacting with an app ad on YouTube, your custom re-acquisition messages can be seen by users across different Google surfaces.

Over the coming months, we will also look at how Google Play can help enable more reacquisition for great, high-quality titles. Churned-user Custom Store Listings will begin rolling out towards the end of this year and you can express your interest in being one of the first to use them by filling out this form.

Caring about quality - driving acquisitions for high-quality apps and games

We focus on crafting exciting and fresh journeys for users on Play. Among other signals, quality evaluation factors in our teams’ judgements and editorial decisions. Users expect great experiences, and we aim to support titles that deliver on their expectation which is why quality is a key aspect of discovery.

First, we consider in-app quality. We look at a range of factors including: Does your title have a polished design, and content that keeps users engaged for the long term? Is your onboarding experience clear, and are any ads well-integrated? Does your title have intuitive navigation, controls, and menu access? Do you meet the guidelines for functional behavior across all the form factors that you support? And is your title accessible to all users?

Technical quality is another important consideration. It can differ greatly depending on user and device, so we're introducing new more user-focused crash and ANR metrics in Android vitals. These will increasingly influence Play Store treatments—steering users away from titles that are likely to provide a poor experience on their specific devices, and towards ones that may be more suitable. In some cases, a warning could be displayed on store listings.

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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 final design and text is subject to change.

We’ll warn you in Android vitals if there’s a risk that your app will get this treatment before it’s visible in Play, so you can take remedial action. Please read our App Quality blog post to learn more.

Finally on the topic of quality, we’re setting a minimum ratings bar of 3.0 stars to improve top charts. We will first launch the ratings change to Top Free charts worldwide and across all form factors in February 2023. Later next year, we plan to bring this change to top paid and grossing charts as well.

Play Console has tools for you to triage your rating, deep dive into top issues users are writing about and respond to reviews directly. Find out more here.

Being transparent about our contributions

As we continue to make Play an even more valuable platform for developers, we want to make sure that you can see the positive impact our surfaces have on your growth. So we’re updating Store Performance reports to better reflect how users discover your titles on Play. This includes more data from off-Play experiences, differentiating paid-for and direct traffic from users’ organic behavior on Play, and the inclusion of key discovery journeys - for instance, searching for categories like ‘Puzzle Games’ - in Explore traffic. Coming soon, we’ll send you a message in Play Console when this update goes live.

All of these changes, along with other exciting features we have in the works, work together. So if you’re invested in the quality of your experiences, evolving your offer, and crafting exciting events and compelling content, Play is the platform and partner to super-charge your growth and success.

Keeping Google Play Safe with New Features and Programs

Posted by Ron Aquino, Senior Director, Trust and Safety, Chrome, Android and Play

Google Play has been the launchpad for millions of developer businesses to connect with consumers around the world as we strive to deliver a safe place to find great apps and games. Our safety initiatives and policies are core ways that we create the trusted experience that users have come to expect. By responsibly evolving these features, policies, and programs, we’re able to help you safely launch new experiences to more than 2.5 billion users in 190 countries around the world.

Today, we’re sharing a number of new features and programs to better partner with you and continue making Google Play a safe platform for everyone.


Protecting your business and your users from risky, unknown traffic

We launched Play Integrity API to all developers earlier this year to help you detect risky, unknown interactions such as from tampered versions of your app or unsupported app environments. You call this API when a user performs an action in your app to check whether it’s your genuine app on a genuine Android device. If something’s off, you can decide what defensive actions to take. Early data show that this feature has helped developers reduce unauthorized usage of their apps by over 50%.

In addition to customizing your API responses and setting up tests in Play Console, we’re launching reporting so you can 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. This will help you spot issues and refine your anti-abuse strategy. Get started today with the Play Integrity API here.

Introducing new protections against review attacks on Play apps

For you to grow successful businesses and for users to have trustworthy information to help them decide if an app is right for them, it’s critical that app reviews are accurate, relevant, and genuine. Earlier this year, we rolled out a more aggressive program to proactively stop inaccurate, coordinated user attacks on app ratings. Our strengthened system now better detects anomalies and unexplained spikes in low star ratings so that our team can quickly investigate suspicious activity and respond to it. Since this program launched at the start of this year, we have had no major review attacks that materially impacted the ratings of top-downloaded apps. We’ve continued to strengthen the program further by introducing a mandatory 24-hour-delay of all incoming app reviews. Play is also exploring ways to evolve our policy to help ensure the content of app reviews is relevant to the app experience and further elevate trustworthy information on our platform. We'll have more to share soon.



Expanding our program to give developers direct Play Policy support

While we help developers understand our policy changes through a variety of communications and trainings, we heard that you want more direct policy support from Google. Early last year, we started our Google Play Developer Helpline pilot to explore giving developers direct policy support over the phone. By the first half of 2021, we scaled the pilot to 12,000 developers in India and since then, we’ve expanded this offering to 44,000 developers in 17 countries. Today, the Helpline program has completed nearly 4,000 policy support sessions with developers and received a satisfaction score of around 90%. So far, this program has helped developers navigate policy compliance issues. We look forward to further scaling the program to many more of you soon.


Launching the Strike Removal pilot program

Beyond expanded policy support, we also introduced a new program this year to provide developers deeper education on important but commonly misunderstood policy areas. We know that most developers work hard to create and distribute their apps with good intentions, and may sometimes unknowingly violate policies. The Play Strike Removal pilot program provides the opportunity for you to remove an enforcement strike by successfully taking a Play Academy training course and assessment related to the policy violation. We’ve started this program with courses on IP Infringement and Spam policy violations, which account for nearly 2 out of 3 developer suspensions. We hope to add more courses in the future to help you better understand the policies that keep Play safe.


Previewing a more privacy-friendly approach to advertising

As a reminder, Privacy Sandbox for Android is a multi-year initiative to create innovative technologies that will both protect user privacy and give you tools to build thriving digital businesses. These solutions aim to make current tracking mechanisms obsolete and limit covert tracking techniques, like fingerprinting. To do this, we're working on core advertising capabilities that don’t need access to cross-app identifiers, like the Ad ID. You'll be able to use these solutions individually or together to target ads and measure them to create efficient campaigns, all while better protecting user privacy. We’re working in close partnership with the industry and developers. Today, you can test Developer Previews, begin designing integrations, and send us feedback.As a platform, we only succeed when our developers succeed. We work with partners, like you, every day to understand the challenges you face, help launch innovative apps to Google Play, and ensure that the apps remain safe and trusted by our shared users. Thank you for your partnership in making Google Play a safe and trustworthy platform for everyone.

Google Play Games beta on PC continues global expansion

Posted by Arjun Dayal, Director, Google Play Games

Earlier this year, we announced that Google Play Games would be coming to PCs as a beta experience in a limited number of markets. Our goal was to gather early feedback so we could continue improving the product to fit the needs of players and developers around the world. In August, we expanded the product to more 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.
Photo of a desktop monitor with keyboard and mouse. On the monitor is the Google Play homepage showing the game Cookie Run Kingdom as the main item ready for install
Google Play Games is available to download in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.
 Subject to game availability and PC compatibility.

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.

Our broader goal continues to be meeting players where they are and giving them access to their games on as many devices as possible. Players participating in the beta have expressed excitement at being able to seamlessly play their favorite games across their phones, tablets, Chromebooks, and PCs. 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.

A phone, Desktop monitor and large tablet screens overlapping side by side while simultanously playing a video trailer for Cookie Run Kingdom. A keyboard and mouse are also visible beneath the screens
Seamless sync across signed-in devices
Subject to game availability and PC compatibility.

We’re thrilled to expand our platform to more markets for players to enjoy their favorite games on Google Play. As we move towards a full release, we will continue to add new features and evaluate developer and player feedback. To sign up for future announcements, or to access the beta in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, or Australia, please go to g.co/googleplaygames. If you’re an Android games developer looking to learn more about Google Play Games, please express interest on our developer site. We’ll have more to share on future beta releases and regional availability soon.

Windows is a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies.
Game titles may vary by region.

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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New features and tools to help you showcase your Play Store listing

Posted by Allison Chang (Product Manager, Google Play), Weifang Sun (Product Manager, Chrome OS), Manuel Wang (Product Manager, Google Play Console), and Marcus Leal (Product Manager, Google Play)

Your Play Store listing is the best way to help prospective users understand the functionality and value of your app. The assets and information you provide - descriptions, images, and videos – are essential to users looking to make a decision on what to download.

Tailoring your app's assets to each form factor is more important than ever, as users are increasingly investing in connected devices beyond their phones, such as tablets, smart watches, and TVs. In fact, the number of active non-mobile Android devices has grown almost 30% in the last year.

Today, we’re announcing new features that put more of your store listing assets front and center in Google Play. We'll also walk through some best practices to help you optimize your listing and generate meaningful installs for your app.
 

Changes on Large Screens

New Content-Forward Formats on Play Homepages

On large screens like tablets, foldables, and Chromebooks, we’re continuing to make improvements that will enable users to discover the best apps for their devices. As we showcased at I/O earlier this year, we’re redesigning the Play Store for large screens and using your screenshots, videos, and descriptions directly in Apps and Games Home.
Play Store homepage for large screens (2023)
The goal of this content-forward approach is to better represent your app in the store and help users make install decisions.

We’ve published a set of content quality guidelines as best practices to showcase your app on large screens. Beginning early next year, apps with assets that follow these criteria will be able to take advantage of richer formats in Play. This won’t impact your app’s promotability, just the way your app is displayed in the Play Store.

Screenshot Support for ChromeOS

When users browse the Play Store on Chromebooks today, they see tablet or phone screenshots in the app’s store listing page. Since this does not always accurately portray the Chromebook experience, we’re now launching the ability to upload Chromebook-specific screenshots in Play Console.
Chromebook screenshots in Play Developer Console

This will allow up to 8 screenshots and will be shown primarily on the Play Store for Chromebooks. These screenshots will appear on both your app listing page and Play homepages.

We recommend using 16:9 screenshots for landscape with dimensions of 1080-7690px.

To get started, visit the Main Store Listing section in Play Console.

Updates to Tablet Screenshot Guidelines

With the new launch of ChromeOS screenshot support, we’re also updating our quality guidelines for tablets for consistency across large screens. While previously uploaded tablet screenshots will not be affected, this should help simplify the process of generating new screenshots when you make updates to your app.


Changes on Phones

Homepages for Other Devices

Last month, we introduced form-factor-specific homepages. This is a dedicated surface on phones for users that have additional non-mobile devices. These homepages improve the visibility of your app and store listing details by allowing users to browse for titles best suited for their smart watches, TVs or cars - all from their phones.
Homepages for other devices

Search Device Filters and Remote Install

Users can also filter results in search with a new device filter in Play. With the filter enabled, search results will only include titles that are compatible with the selected device.


Device search filters
Remote install to other devices

Store Listing Best Practices

Since these changes will make your store listing details much more prominent in Play, here are some ways to help you optimize your app assets:

Use device-specific screenshots that demonstrate the core app or game experience.

In Play Console, you can upload screenshots to show users how your app or game will look on different device types and highlight unique form factor features. When choosing screenshots, use imagery that conveys the primary user flows within your app. This will help users on all devices anticipate what the true app or game experience will be like for them.

Use device imagery with caution

Showing a physical device in your store listing may cause your screenshots and videos to become obsolete quickly or alienate some users. To save time maintaining your assets, use screenshots and videos of just the app or game experience.


Use high-quality images with the proper aspect ratio and resolution

Using high quality images is essential to ensuring your screenshots look great on all screen sizes. Don’t include screenshots that are pixelated, stretched or compressed, or improperly rotated.

Avoid overloading assets with text

To make sure your screenshots and videos look great when featured on Play homepages, avoid using too much text. Since we may resize your assets to fit certain screen sizes, this will prevent any text from being cut off unintentionally.

If you need to use text, avoid any time-sensitive copy that needs to be updated frequently.

As we continue to test ways to feature your store listing information more prominently in Play, the quality of your assets remain as important as ever. We hope these features and tips empower you to showcase the best of your app on all device types. For more tips like these to help you get started, visit our content quality guidelines.

3 things to look forward to at Google Play Live

Since 2012, Google Play has helped people around the world discover their favorite apps, games and digital content. And now, we're bringing YouTube creators to Google Play for our first-ever live show in the United States. The show starts at 9 a.m. Eastern time on October 12, and you can watch it live on Google Play or by visiting our official YouTube channel.

Here are three things to look forward to at the show.


1. Play alongside YouTube creators

Creators will introduce their favorite games and apps, and will play them live on stage — sometimes with anyone else who wants to join. Jaron Meyers & Tim Stone, Lizzy Capri, Mari Takahashi and Preacher Lawson will host the show. And their friends and surprise guests will also join the livestream to play alongside the audience and participate in fun challenges.

2. Choose your adventure

Audience participation is a huge part of the event — you’ll have a chance to influence what’s happening live on set through things like polls and a live chat. Here's a look at what you can expect.

Run of the show starting at 9 a.m. ET and ending at 5 p.m. ET. The first segment is led by Amira Virgil (Xmiramira), the second by Kelsey Impicciche (kelseydangerous), the third by Andre (BlackNerdComedy), and the fourth Lily Pichu (LilyPichu)

3. Nab last-chance deals on apps and games

We’ve partnered with developers of some of the top apps and games on Google Play like HBO Max, Candy Crush Saga and Genshin Impact, so you can get special deals in the apps and games the YouTube creators will be playing live. Visit Google Play to see all the deals on gold bars, special bundles, boosters and more. You’ll also get 3x Play Points when you buy in-app and in-game items through October 12[6474b6].

Tune in at 9 a.m. Eastern time on October 12 to watch the show live.

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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Just launched: Apply for support from Google Play’s $2M Indie Games Fund in Latin America

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Global Developer Marketing

As part of our commitment to helping all developers grow on our platform, at Google Play we have various programs focused on supporting small games studios. A few weeks ago we announced the winners of the Indie Games Festival in Europe, Korea and Japan, and the 2022 class of the Indie Games Accelerator.

Today, we are launching the Indie Games Fund in Latin America. We will be awarding $2 million dollars in non-dilutive cash awards, in addition to hands-on support, to selected small games studios based in LATAM, to help them build and grow their businesses on Google Play.

The program is open to indie game developers who have already launched a game - whether it’s on Google Play or another mobile platform, PC or console. Each selected recipient will get between $150,000 and $200,000 dollars to help them take their game to the next level, and build successful businesses.

Check out all eligibility criteria and apply now. Priority will be given to applications received by 12:00 p.m. BRT, 31 October, 2022.

For more updates about all our programs, resources and tools for indie game developers, follow us on Twitter @GooglePlayBiz and Google Play business community on LinkedIn.




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