Tag Archives: Quality

Policy Updates: New Wear OS App Quality Requirements

Posted by Ishaan Aggarwal, Product Manager

Today we are announcing upcoming policy changes intended to improve the quality of apps for Wear OS and their presentation in the Google Play Store. We are introducing these changes to ensure app users get a basic consistent experience across all apps in accordance with our latest Wear OS design and development principles. In addition, updates to the publishing requirements will improve the discovery and presentation of your Wear OS apps in the Google Play Store.

The new requirements will come into effect from August 31, 2023. Until then, we will continue to use the existing policies to review and maintain the quality of Wear OS apps. The overall Wear OS app review process will continue to be mandatory and remains unchanged.

Alongside the above policy changes, all Wear OS apps must target Android 11 (API level 30). Apps that target lower levels will stop being discoverable to all Google Play users whose devices run Android OS versions newer than the app’s target API level from August 31, 2023. This is to ensure that the app is built to meet the safety and quality standard that users expect from newer Wear OS versions.

The following list highlights examples of upcoming quality changes. See a comprehensive list of review criteria here:

  • Black Background – Use a black background for all apps and tiles.
images of watch faces side by side showing Do: Use black Background on the left and Don't use any other color for background on right
  • Ongoing Activity – When a user has an ongoing activity, you must do the following:
    • Show the ongoing activity indicator on the watch face.
    • Update recent apps with the appropriate app launcher chip for the ongoing activity.
    • Reference the ongoing activity from the tile, if the tile is present in the user’s tile carousel.

    Images of two watch faces displaying ongoing activity indicator at the bottom of the watch face on the left and Ongoing activity on an app launcher chip in recent apps on the right
  • Show Time – Display the time of day clearly at the top of the app home screen and any ongoing activity screens. We recommend that you display the time of day at the top of all activities except dialogs and confirmation screens.
    Images of two watch faces with showing time display at the top of the app on the left and Don’t display the time in a dialog, confirmation screen, or picker on the right
These quality updates span visual experience, functionality, performance, and Google Play listings; they are designed to help you provide a consistent, intuitive and enjoyable experience for Wear OS users. With careful consideration of app design, optimal functional behavior, and Google Play experiences, we are aiming to improve app quality and discoverability of quality apps across the Wear OS ecosystem.

As you design and develop, keep in mind the following recommendations to ensure a modern, successful, and discoverable app:
  • Build a modern app that targets API Level 30.
  • Test your app on devices running Wear OS 3 and above to make sure it works well on the latest Wear OS versions.
  • Consider the new Wear OS quality requirements early when designing and developing your app to create quality experience.

Thank you for your continued support of Wear OS by Google. We look forward to seeing what you create.

Updated guidance to improve your app quality and discovery on Google Play

Posted by Bert de Weerd and Tingmui Li, Google Play

When Google Play launched in 2008, it was easy for developers to get noticed with only a few hundred apps and games live on the Play Store. Fast forward to today, there are now millions of apps and games available to audiences in over 190 countries. The unique assets you provide to the Store – images, video, descriptions, even your app name itself – are essential to users making a decision on what to download.

Google Play is increasingly showing more of your assets front and center, surfacing graphic assets and descriptions right on Apps and Games home. To ensure that your store listing assets can help users anticipate your in-app or in-game experience and drive meaningful downloads, we are:

  1. Pre-announcing a policy change for app metadata
  2. Introducing new guidelines on Store listing preview assets

1. Pre-announce policy change for app metadata

Since your app title, icon, and developer name are the most important discovery elements on your store listing page, we are preparing to launch a new set of policies to keep these elements recognizable and unique, focusing on:

  • Limiting the length of app titles to 30 characters
  • Prohibiting keywords that imply store performance, promotion in the icon, title and developer name
  • Eliminating graphic elements that may mislead users in the app icon

App title, icon and developer name that do not meet the upcoming policies will not be allowed on Google Play. You can expect more details about this policy change, including enforcement start dates, later this year.

We recommend reviewing the examples of do and don’t below and thinking about how these changes may impact you, so you can get ready for the upcoming policy changes.

Store performance or rank:
Price and promotional information:
Play programs and graphic elements that mislead users:
Emoticons & repeated or sequential special characters and or punctuations:

2. New guidelines for Store listing preview assets

We are also announcing new store listing preview asset guidelines for the feature graphics, screenshots, videos, and short descriptions you supply to showcase your app's features and functionality. Assets that don’t meet our guidelines may be ineligible for promotion and recommendation on major Google Play surfaces like Apps and Games home.

The new guideline for developer supplied assets focus on the following principles:

  • Do the preview assets accurately represent the app or game?
  • Do the preview assets provide enough information to help users decide whether to install?
  • Are the preview assets free of buzzwords like "free" or "best" and instead focus on providing meaningful information about the unique aspects of your app or game?
  • Are the preview assets localized correctly and easy to read?

To ensure that your apps and games are eligible for recommendations on all surfaces on Google Play, please review our new store listing guidelines. We’ll start using these guidelines to inform our recommendations starting in the second half of 2021.

We hope you found both the policy pre-announcement and preview asset guideline announcement useful as you plan your roadmap for the year, and we hope you share in our excitement for a more useful and engaging Play Store.

How we’re helping people find quality apps and games on Google Play

Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play

People enjoy using apps and games which meet their performance and quality expectations. Excessive battery usage, slow render times, and crashes, on the other hand, can be a source of frustration. In fact, in an internal analysis of app reviews on Google Play, we noticed that half of 1-star reviews mentioned app stability. Developers who focus on app quality can see improvements in their rating, and ultimately their retention and monetization.

As part of our continued effort to deliver the best possible Google Play experience, we recently enhanced our search and discovery algorithms to reflect app quality. This results in higher quality apps being surfaced in the Play Store more than similar apps of lower quality (eg: apps that exhibit more frequent crashes). The change has had a positive impact on engagement -- we've seen that people go on to use higher quality apps more and uninstall them less.

Developers focusing on performance can use the Play Console to help find and fix a number of quality issues. Android vitals identifies key performance issues, reported by opted-in devices which have your app installed, so you can address them. The pre-launch report shows you the result of testing your alpha or beta app on popular physical devices so you can catch issues before launching updates. Also, ratings and reviews can provide additional insights related to app quality, directly from people using your app. To see the positive effect this can have, find out how Busuu increased their rating from 4.1☆ to 4.5☆ by focusing on app performance.

Google Play strives to help people find and discover safe, high quality, useful, and relevant apps. By focusing on the quality and performance of your app, you'll find more success on Google Play. For more tips and best practices to grow your app or game business, get the Playbook app.

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