Tag Archives: Play Console

Making Ratings and Reviews better for users and developers

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Scott Lin, and Tat Yang Koh, Product Managers at Google Play

Ratings and reviews are important. They provide valuable quantitative and qualitative feedback on your users’ reported experience of your app or game, and the broader service that you offer. That’s why they’re one of the signals people use when deciding what to download on Google Play.

We’ve heard from both Play Store users and developers that ratings and reviews could be more helpful. This is especially true when ratings from one area unfairly impact another — like when a bug that only impacted a single country negatively affects the app’s rating everywhere; or when positive improvements in a tablet experience are overlooked because of the number of users on phones. So we’re starting a multi-quarter program of improvements to make ratings more personalized and indicative of the experience each individual user can expect, and to make them easier to navigate and use for developers:

From November 2021, users on phones will start to see ratings specific to their registered country
Early in 2022 users on other form-factors such as tablets, Chromebooks, and wearables will start to see ratings specific to the device that they’re on

We understand that many developers closely monitor the ratings that their potential users see, so we’re making sure you have plenty of notice about these upcoming changes. We’ve also made enhancements to Play Console to help you understand your ratings and reviews - especially across form-factors.

Changes to Google Play Console

Device type insights

Expanding your support for different device types is one of the most important and impactful changes you can make to your user interfaces. Adding tablet-optimized layouts or better mouse and keyboard support for Chrome OS can result in a step-change in the quality of your users’ experience, which in turn influences their ratings and reviews.

New Device type ratings insights are available in Play Console ratings overview and breakdown pages

To make it easier to spot opportunities across various device types and track the impact of enhanced experiences, we’ve added new Device Type dimensions to the ratings page. We’ve also added a Device Type filter to your reviews so you can easily see how your tablet users are rating you, or what your users on Chrome OS say in their reviews.

More flexible date and period selections

Many of you have told us that you want to access more granular data than our selectors allowed. So, we’ve broken down your segmentation options and made them easier to use. You can now independently select the time period you want to plot (from the last 28 days through to your app’s complete lifetime), and how you want your ratings data to be aggregated (daily, weekly, or every 28 days). This allows you to access more granular data over longer periods of time.

Select any time range and aggregation period independently to find the ratings data you want

Download data easily

We’ve also enabled CSV downloads of your average data and rating distributions. Combined with the new data selection options, you can easily query and download much more of your data and perform offline analysis. For example, you could download your entire history of daily ratings distributions and correlate it in a spreadsheet with customer service contacts.

Access and download all your data including ratings breakdowns directly from the overview page

All of these changes are live in Play Console now. Visit Ratings analysis and Reviews to try them out.*

Upcoming changes to ratings in Google Play

Ratings help people decide which apps to download and they are taken into consideration for featuring and placement on Play Store. But because the app experience can vary depending on the user’s region and device type, aggregate ratings don’t always tell the whole story. That’s why, starting in November 2021, we’re going to change the ratings that individual users see based on where they’re registered, and later in the year what device they’re using.

From November, this means that users on phones will see specific ratings for the country or region they’re based in. So a user in Japan will see app ratings generated from those submitted by other Japanese users.

Early next year we’ll further update ratings to reflect the device type users are browsing Play on, whether it’s: tablets and foldables, Chrome OS, Wear, or Auto. This will give users a better impression of the experience that they can expect for the device they’re using. We recommend you take a look at your form-factor ratings today - especially for tablets where growth is very strong - to see if you should invest in optimising your users’ experiences.

We understand that as a developer you will want to make sure you understand and get ahead of any major shifts in your user-visible ratings. So at least 10 weeks before any change in Play Store, we’ll automatically analyze the change your app can expect to see and reach out to any developer that will see a change of more that 0.2 stars on any device type in a key market (one with >5% of your store listing visitors). This will give you time to plan if you want to make key changes to your app.

These changes in Google Play will start to roll out from November with country or region-specific ratings. Look out for messages about your ratings in your Play Console Inbox towards the end of this year, and don’t forget that you can get ahead by checking your ratings by country and device-type today.

*Please note you need a Play Console account to access these links.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Source: Android Developers Blog

Working Towards Android App Excellence

Posted by Jacob Lehrbaum Director of Developer Relations, Android

illustration of freckled hand over mobile phone with graphs

Great app experiences are great for business. In fact, nearly three-quarters of Android app users who leave a 5 star review on Google Play mention the quality of their experience with the app¹; its speed, design, and usability. At Google, we want to help all developers achieve app excellence, and in turn help you drive user acquisition, retention, and monetization.

So what is “app excellence”? This may sound aspirational, but it is within reach for many apps. It starts with a laser focus on the user, and more specifically, with intuitive user experiences that get people to the main functionality of your app as quickly as possible — but that is just the beginning. Excellent apps are consistent across all of their screens and experiences. They perform well, no matter the device used. App excellence is achievable when all of the stakeholders who influence your app are invested in the experience of using your app.

One of the blockers that gets in the way of app excellence is shared or unclear accountability. Some of the primary measures of app quality, such as crashes and load times, are often seen as the responsibility of one group in the company, such as the engineering team. However, when we talk to best-in-class organizations² about how they achieve app quality, it is clear that taking a cross-functional approach is key, with engineering, design, product, and business teams working toward a common goal.

So what are some internal best practices behind app excellence?

Make app quality a cross-organizational focus — not just an engineering concern

It’s a way easier conversation for me at the business end because I can say “these competitors’ apps are faster than ours; we need to reduce our load time down from 5 seconds to 4 seconds”.

Software engineer, x-platform app

App excellence helps drive business performance. New features are great, but if they slow down app start-up times or take up too much device space, people will eventually use your app less often or even delete it. Engineers who have built a company-wide focus on quality have often done so by quantifying the impact of quality issues on business performance, through:

Case studies showing the impact of responsiveness, APK size, start-up time, and memory usage on business KPIs. Here you can find practical case studies showcasing how developers such as Headspace and Duolingo achieved app excellence.
Benchmarking against competitor apps. Check out peer benchmarks and other metrics on the Google Play Console.

Organize teams around features and/or app user journey stages

Companies that organize teams around features — or stages in the user journey — are more likely to deliver consistent experiences across each operating system they support, bring new apps or features to market faster, and deliver a better app experience for all their customers. These teams are often cross-functional groups that span engineering, marketing, ux, and product — and are responsible for the success of a feature or user journey stage³ across all devices and platforms. In addition to better experiences and feature parity, this structure enables alignment of goals across functional areas while reducing silos, and it also helps teams hyper-focus on addressing specific objectives.

Squads focused on business objectives heighten focus on the user.

Use the same devices your customers use

If a majority of your users are on a specific type of device, you can build empathy for their experience if you use the same phone, tablet or smart watch as your primary device. This is especially relevant for senior leadership in your organization who make decisions that impact the day-to-day experience of millions of users. For example, Duolingo has built this into their company DNA. Every Duolingo employee — including their CEO — either uses exclusively or has access to an entry level Android device to reflect a significant portion of their user base.

A user-centric approach to quality and app excellence is essential to business growth. If you are interested in learning how to achieve app excellence, read our case studies with practical tips, and sign up to attend our App Excellence Summit by visiting the Android app excellence webpage.

In subsequent blog posts, we will dig deep into two drivers of excellent app experiences: app performance and how it is linked to user behavior, and creating seamless user experiences across devices. Sign up to the Android developer newsletter here to be notified of the next installment, and get news and insights from the Android team.

Notes

Internal Google Play data, 2021. ↩
Google App Quality Research, 2021 ↩
The series of steps each user takes as they interact with your app is referred to as the “user journey.” Examples of user journey stages include installs, onboarding, engagement, and retention ↩

Source: Android Developers Blog

The future of Android App Bundles is here

Posted by Dom Elliott, Product Manager at Google Play

Since we launched the Android App Bundle in May 2018, we’ve seen our developer community embrace this new standard to benefit from streamlined releases and advanced distribution features. There are now over 1 million apps using app bundles in production, including the majority of the top 1,000 apps and games on Google Play such as Adobe, Duolingo, Gameloft, Netflix, redBus, Riafy, and Twitter.

To bring these benefits to more users and focus on modern Android distribution that benefits all developers, Google Play will start requiring new apps to be published with the Android App Bundle starting August 2021. This will replace the APK as the standard publishing format.

Modern Android distribution

If you haven’t made the switch to app bundles yet, here are some of the benefits you’re missing:

Android App Bundle: Google Play uses the app bundle to generate and optimize APKs for distribution for different device configurations and languages. This makes your app smaller (on average, 15% smaller than a universal APK) and faster to download, which can lead to more installs and fewer uninstalls.
Play App Signing: Play App Signing, which is required for app bundles, protects your app signing key from loss by using Google’s secure infrastructure and offers the option of upgrading to a new, cryptographically stronger app signing key.
Play Feature Delivery: Used by more than 10% of the top apps using app bundles, Play Feature Delivery gives you the ability to customize what feature modules are delivered to which device and when, with install-time, conditional, and on-demand delivery modes.
Play Asset Delivery: Reduces user waiting time by dynamically delivering large assets while cutting delivery costs. Games using Play Asset Delivery can use texture compression format targeting, so your users only get the assets suitable for their device, with no wasted space or bandwidth.
Future improvements: Soon, Play App Signing will start rolling out APK Signature Scheme v4 to select apps making it possible for them to optionally access upcoming performance features available on newer devices. Tune into the Google for Games Developer Summit on July 12 to find out more.

Recap of what’s changing starting August 2021

TYPE OF RELEASE	REPLACED	REQUIRED AUG 2021
New apps on Google Play	APK	Android App Bundle (AAB)
New apps on Google Play	Expansion files (OBBs)	Play Asset Delivery or Play Feature Delivery
Updates to existing apps	No change
New instant experiences	Instant app ZIP	Instant-enabled Android App Bundle (AAB)
Updates to instant experiences	Instant app ZIP	Instant-enabled Android App Bundle (AAB)

As a reminder, the app bundle requirement applies to new apps. Existing apps are currently exempt, as are private apps being published to managed Google Play users. Thanks to the thousands of developers who have been a part of the app bundle journey. We look forward to bringing you more improvements and features soon.

- - -

Answers to some Android App Bundle FAQs

How much work is required to use an app bundle vs an APK?

For most apps, very little work is required to build an AAB instead of an APK. It’s mostly a matter of choosing a different option at build time and then testing as normal. The app bundle is an open source format supported by major build tools such as Android Studio, Gradle, Bazel, Buck, Cocos Creator, Unity, Unreal Engine, and other engines. Play Core Native and Play Core Java & Kotlin SDKs also make it easy to start using optional, advanced app bundle features, whatever your preferred coding environment.

Why aren't expansion files (OBBs) supported with app bundles? Why should games use Play Asset Delivery?

APKs require separate files (OBBs) to serve additional resources to users. However, because OBBs are not signed and are stored in the app’s external storage, they’re not very secure. With Play Asset Delivery (PAD), games larger than 150MB can replace OBBs by publishing the entire game as a single app bundle on the Play Store. Beyond offering a smoother publishing process and flexible delivery modes, PAD carries benefits over the legacy expansion files: its delta patching of assets is optimized for large apps meaning updates require dramatically less device storage than OBBs. As a result, fast-follow drives higher install rate and store conversion rate. Finally, with ASTC now supported on ~80% of devices, texture compression format targeting lets you serve ASTC to devices that support it. You can target the widest range of Android devices while making efficient use of the available hardware and device storage.

If I use app bundles, can I still publish through multiple distribution channels/app stores?

Yes, there are multiple ways to achieve this. You can either use the same app signing key everywhere or use unique app signing keys for different channels, including a unique app signing key for Google Play. You can either build and sign artifacts for all distribution channels locally or you can download distribution APKs from Google Play for use on other channels. Distribution APKs downloaded from Google Play, either via the app bundle explorer in Play Console or via the Play Developer API, are signed with the same key used by Play App Signing.

I’m launching a new app. Can I decide what my app signing key is?

Yes, this option is available in the Play Console. When creating a new app, you can choose one of the options to provide the app signing key that Google uses. This allows you to keep a copy of your app signing key locally, for example to generate signed versions for distribution through other channels using the same key as the Play version. Soon, the Play Console will make releasing an app for the first time a little easier by giving you the ability to change your app signing key if you make a mistake, as long as you do it before you publish to an open track the first time.

When distributing apps on Google Play, how do I ensure my app is delivered to users the way I intend?

At any time, you can download and inspect artifacts from the Play Store, from the app bundle explorer in the Play Console, and via the Play Developer API to verify your app. In addition, code transparency for app bundles is a new, optional feature that can be used to inspect that code running on a device matches the code that was originally built and signed by the developer.

I have an app published on Google Play already. Can I start using Play App Signing without providing a copy of my existing app signing key?

To use Play App Signing today you have to provide a copy of your existing app signing key because Google Play needs a copy of it to sign and deliver updates to your existing users. This suits most developers, over 1M apps are using Play App Signing in production. Soon, we will add an additional option for existing apps to opt in to Play App Signing by performing a key upgrade. Choosing this option means Play App Signing can use a new, unique key for all new installs and their updates. However, for this to work, when you upload an app bundle, you also need to upload a legacy APK signed with your old key so that Google Play can continue to deliver updates to your existing users.

Can I ever change my app signing key?

Yes, some apps can request an app signing key upgrade for new installs in Play Console. Google Play will use your new key to sign new installs and app updates while using your legacy app signing key to sign updates for users who installed your app before the key upgrade. Soon, Play App Signing key upgrade will also add support for APK Signature Scheme v3 key rotation. This will make key upgrade a possible option for more apps and help apps signed with upgraded keys reach more users.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Play Dev ID requirements + 2-Step Verification

Posted by Luke Jefferson, Product Manager at Google Play & Raz Lev, Product Manager at Google Play Trust and Safety

Over the past few years, Google Play has seen tremendous growth. Android apps and games have become a critical part of people’s lives, built by developers of all sizes from all over the world, whether professionally or just for fun.

To keep Google Play safe and secure and to better serve our developer community, we are introducing two new security measures: additional identification requirements and 2-Step Verification. These measures will help strengthen your account security and will help us better understand your needs.

Developer identification requirements

Today, when you create a new Google Play developer account, we ask you for an email address and a phone number.

With this update, account owners of developer accounts will also be asked to provide:

Your account type — whether it’s personal or belongs to an organization
A contact name
Your physical address
Verification of your email address and phone number

Your contact information allows us to share important information and updates about your app. It also helps us make sure that every account is created by a real person with real contact details, which helps us keep the Play Store safe for all users.

This information will not be public-facing and is just to help us confirm your identity and communicate.

2-Step Verification

In addition to learning more about our developer community, we’re also taking steps to improve security and keep your accounts safer by mandating that users of Google Play Console sign in using Google’s 2-Step Verification. 2-Step Verification is an additional safeguard to help protect your account, your app, and your users.

Learn more about 2-Step Verification and how to set it up for your own account.

Play ID requirments and 2 step verification image

Timelines

Starting today, developer account owners will be able to declare their account type and verify their contact details. For now, declaring an account type is optional, but it will be required for any account owners who want to update their contact details.

In August, all new developer accounts will need to specify their account type and verify their contact information at sign-up. We will also make 2-Step Verification a requirement for the owners of new developer accounts.

Later this year, all existing developer account owners will be required to declare their account type, provide the required information, and verify their contact details. We will also require developers to sign in using 2-Step Verification.

Best practices

In addition to these changes, we’d like to remind you of some best practices to help keep your account in good health and make sure you don’t miss important information.

Keep your contact information active and up to date. We may occasionally check if your account is active by emailing or calling the account owner using the details provided, so it is important that they are accurate.
Consider using a contact email address different to the one that you use to create your Google account, especially if your developer account will have multiple users or is for an organization or business. You might want to consider setting up a dedicated shared inbox for this purpose, so that the right set of people within your team or organization can access these important messages. We encourage you to use an email address from your own domain if you have one.
The contact email address for an organization or business account should not be a generic or personal email address. Make sure to use an email address associated with your organization.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Customize the KPIs on your Google Play Console dashboard

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play

Google Play Console metrics can help you understand your app’s performance across growth and acquisition, engagement and monetization, quality, and churn. But with dozens of metrics — and thousands of variations — we know not every metric is relevant to every person. One of the challenges you’ve shared with us is that it can sometimes be difficult to find exactly the metrics that you need for your personal job role, and to access them quickly and regularly once you have found them. .

That’s why today, we’re pleased to announce that you can now customize and pin the precise metrics that matter to you in a personalized KPIs section at the top of your app dashboard. These customizations are unique to you, so you can configure your KPIs however you want without affecting the rest of your team.

Getting started is easy. On the dashboard for any app, scroll down to the KPI section and select “choose KPIs.” You can either build your own or start with suggested KPIs for job specialities, such as Growth, Quality and Health, or Monetization.

There’s an extensive list of available metrics, including our new engagement data and peer comparisons. Search filters make it easy to find just what you want, and once selected you can edit the dimensions and filters to suit your exact needs. For instance, you could display Daily Active Users for your top-five languages; or if you’re a country manager, only show revenue from a specific country or territory.

You can name any of your KPIs to make them easy to remember, and even include emojis!

Once you’ve configured a list of KPIs that suit you, you can order them to control where they appear. This way, you can make sure that your most important metrics are always first to be seen.

You can include up to 20 KPIs, so your dashboard can be as robust or as streamlined as you want.

In addition to our suggested metrics, you can also pin any other dashboard card to your KPIs. For even finer control, you can even add any reports you’ve saved from the Statistics page. This allows you to create hyper-specific custom KPI cards from any of our core metrics.

There are as many ways to customize your KPIs as there are people using the console. Instead of seeing default KPIs, now everyone can have a customized dashboard showing exactly the metrics that matter to their individual workflows.

Ready to see for yourself? Just log into Google Play Console to try it out.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Source: Android Developers Blog

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!

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Source: Android Developers Blog

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

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play Console

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.

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!

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Source: Android Developers Blog

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

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.

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.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Source: Android Developers Blog

Protecting your Google Play Console account with 2-Step Verification

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play Console

Google Play Console has something for everyone, from QAs and PMs to engineers and marketing managers. The new Google Play Console beta, available now at play.google.com/console, offers customized, secure access to everyone on your team. For a closer look at some of its new features and workflows, tune in to this week’s series of live webinars, which will also be available on demand.

Granting your team members safe access to specific features in your developer account is one of the best ways to increase the value of our tools for your organization. We want to make sure that your developer account is as safe as possible so you feel confident when granting access. A key way to do that is to make sure that every person who has access to your account signs in using secure methods that follow best practices. That’s why, towards the end of this year, we’re going to start requiring users of Google Play Console to sign in using Google's 2-Step Verification.

2-Step Verification uses both your password and a second way to identify you for added security. This could be a text message to a registered phone, an authenticator app, alerts on supported devices, or a hardware security key. Normally, you only have to do this when you sign in for the first time on a new computer. It’s one of the easiest ways to increase the level of security for you and your team members’ accounts.

Learn more about 2-Step Verification here, and how to set it up for your own account.

If you have any comments or concerns about using 2-Step Verification to sign in to Google Play Console, or if you think it will impact you or your teams’ use of Google Play Console, use this form to let us know. All responses will be read by our product team and will help us shape our future plans.

Your team won’t be required to use 2-Step Verification immediately, although we recommend that you set it up now. We will start mandating 2-Step Verification with new users to Google Play Console towards the end of Q3, followed by existing users with high-risk permissions like app publishing or changing the prices in in-app products, later in the year. We’ll also remind every impacted user in Google Play Console at least 30 days before the change takes effect. We may also start to re-verify when you’re undertaking a sensitive action like changing your developer name or transferring ownership of an app.

Hundreds of thousands of Google Play Console users already use 2-Step Verification to keep their accounts safe, and it's been the default for G Suite customers for years. But we understand that requiring this may impact some of your existing workflows, which is why we’re giving advance notice of this change and asking for your feedback.

We can all take steps to keep our accounts and the developer community safe. Thanks for publishing your apps on Google Play.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Source: Android Developers Blog

Meet Google Play Billing Library Version 3

Posted by Steve Hartford, Product Manager, Google Play

Google Play is committed to a healthy ecosystem, where developers succeed by creating high-quality apps that users love. Many developers realize that success using Google Play’s one-time purchase and subscription services. Over the last decade, we’ve improved the purchase experience for Android users with features like paying via carrier billing (with over 180 supported carriers today), and tools to budget expenses and easily manage subscriptions.

We’re furthering these efforts with the launch of Billing Library version 3. Now available, this newest version includes new ways users can pay, subscription promotion capabilities, purchase attribution for games, and improvements to purchase reliability and security. Starting August 2, 2021, all new apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer. By November 1, 2021, all updates to existing apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer.

Paying with Cash

We continuously work to ensure users worldwide can pay for your one-time purchases and subscriptions in a way that’s comfortable and convenient.

Cash remains the most widely used payment method globally with 2.7 trillion transactions across all goods and services in 2018 (Source: Euromonitor). Last year we previewed a new payment method in which the transaction is completed off-device, such as paying with cash at a local convenience store. According to World Bank, two billion people worldwide do not have access to a bank account, so these pending transactions can help unlock new buyers, especially in emerging markets where cash is a popular form of payment.

Today we’re announcing users can easily pay for one-time purchases with cash in Indonesia and Malaysia at over 50,000 locations, including at leading retailers such as 7-Eleven and Alfamart. Pending transactions will be available soon for all developers.

Cash Purchases using Billing Library 3

More places for users to discover and purchase

Billing Library version 3 unlocks the ability for users to discover and purchase items outside of your app, such as across the Play store. One example is the new frictionless subscription promo code redemption experience. Now when you offer promo codes for subscription free trials, users can easily redeem them in the Play store - even if your app isn’t installed yet. It’s a simple redeem, subscribe and install experience that reduces the effort required for users to get going.

Purchase Attribution

Many games and apps need to ensure in-app purchases are attributed to a specific in-game character, avatar, or profile. Billing Library now allows you to specify this information when launching the purchase flow. After the purchase completes, you can retrieve the information and correctly attribute the purchase. This removes the need to build a custom solution using the deprecated AIDL developer payload.

Billing Library Version Requirements

Just like Play’s TargetSDK requirements, it’s important that all users are able to benefit from any security, performance, and user experience improvements in new versions of Billing Library. At Google I/O in 2019, we released Billing Library version 2 and announced changes including a two-year support window for each major release.

This means starting August 2, 2021, all new apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer. By November 1, 2021, all updates to existing apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer.

After these dates, you won’t be able to publish apps that use older AIDL, Billing Library version 1 or Billing Library version 2 integrations. Apps already in the Play Store can continue to be downloaded and will process in-app purchases. Any subsequent app upgrades, however, will require Billing Library version 3 or newer.

Billing Library version support

Availability

Billing Library version 3 is available today for all game and app developers in Java and Kotlin flavors. For game developers using Unity, we also launched a Billing Library 3-based Unity IAP plugin. This plugin allows Unity developers to meet the Billing Library version requirements and access all Play billing features.

Please upgrade any billing-related SDKs and libraries to versions supporting Billing Library version 3. Reach out to the SDK or library owner if one is not available. We’re working with top providers on their Billing Library version 3 compatibility.

Next Steps

While we recommend upgrading annually, we will be supporting each major release for two years. We recommend developers use Billing Library version 3 today for all new apps, and migrate existing billing integrations as soon as feasible - well ahead of the 2021 deadlines.

For developers who haven’t moved to Billing Library, we realize the transition from AIDL can be non-trivial for existing apps, and we want to help make the move as smooth as possible. We’ve created a migration guide for apps currently using AIDL, and there’s also a video walkthrough.

We’ve also updated our documentation - including guides for purchase attribution, using promo codes, and fighting abuse. Please let us know about any implementation issues - here’s how to contact us.

For details on all the Play Commerce platform improvements, watch our “What’s New” video session.

We’re looking forward to working with you to deliver great purchase experiences in your apps and games.