Android Developers Blog

Posted by Sameer Samat, VP, Product Management Helping developers build sustainable businesses is a core part of Google Play’s mission. We work with partners every day to understand the challenges they face and help them bring their innovative ideas to life. Getting a new app off the ground and into orbit is not easy! To aid their quest for growth we provide a broad range of support, from powerful marketing tools and actionable data in the Play Console , education via Play Academy , "> best practices and thought leadership resources, programs such as the Indie Games Festival , Indie Corner , and accelerator programs around the world. We’re always looking for new ways to give them an added boost. Starting on July 1, 2021 we are reducing the service fee Google Play receives when a developer sells digital goods or services to 15% for the first $1M (USD) of revenue every developer earns each year. With this change, 99% of developers globally that sell digital goods and servic...

Posted by Neethi Thomas, Dafna Gal and Ashnil Dixit, Google Play At Google Play, we’re committed to giving Android developers access to the largest possible market for your apps and games. Google Play already supports free and paid apps in over 165 markets. We had previously lowered minimum prices developers can set for their products for 20 markets like India and Brazil. Today, we’re happy to announce that we have reduced the minimum price limit for products in 20 more markets across Latin America, EMEA, and APAC. With these new lower limits, you can now set prices in the range of 10-30 cents US equivalent in most of these markets. These ultra-low price points, or “sub-dollar” prices, allow you to reach new potential buyers by adjusting your pricing to better reflect local purchasing power and demand. It also gives you more flexibility to set your global pricing strategy and gives more users the opportunity to enjoy monetized experiences in your apps and games. The minimum price limi...

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play Today in Google Play Console, we’ve launched a suite of new metrics* and unique comparative benchmarks. Using these, you can evaluate your app or games’ engagement and monetization trends against up to 250 different peersets, helping you make better, more informed decisions about your product roadmaps and opportunities. Whether you want to prioritize new features to drive engagement, experiment with pricing, or drive up retention, we hear from all developers that they need great data and insights to help make the best investments. While some larger developers can compare data from across their portfolios, this isn’t always possible — for instance, when entering a new territory, if you don’t publish directly comparable apps, or if you only publish one or two games in the first place. In these types of cases, how do you know if your app or game’s performance is good and where you can be better? With this launch, we’re here to help al...

Posted by Hoi Lam , Android App Quality Since the launch of Android more than 10 years ago, the platform and the user’s expectations have grown. There are improvements from user experience through material design to the importance and advancement in privacy . We know you want your apps to offer a great user experience. At the same time, we also know that it’s not always straightforward to know which area to tackle first. That’s why we are launching a new App Quality section in our developer site to help you keep up-to-date with key aspects of app quality and provide related resources. In the first release, we have updated the Core App Quality checklist to take into account recent Android releases as well as the current trends of the app ecosystem. Here are some highlights in this update: Visual Experience - We highlight the best practice of using Material Design Components in place of platform components such as buttons. This will give your app a modern look as well as m...

Posted by Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Business Development, Games & Applications Today, we announced Google Play’s annual Best of 2020 awards , highlighting the year’s best apps, games and digital content. None of this would be possible without the developers that created the amazing content that made a profound impact on us in 2020, or should we say a Genshin Impact … From miHoYo Limited to Loona Inc, the makers behind your favorite apps and games were unafraid to experiment, challenge the status quo, and design incredible experiences we never thought possible. Check out the full rundown of the developers behind the best apps and games of 2020 in the U.S. on Google Play: Best App of 2020 Loóna: Bedtime Calm & Relax by Loona Inc. Best Personal Growth Apps Paired: App for Couples | Relationship Advice by Better Half Ltd. Centr, by Chris Hemsworth by Loup Pty Ltd Speekoo by LearnMyLanguage Intellect by The Intellect Company Jumprope: How-to Videos by Jumpr...

Posted by Hoi Lam , Developer Relations Engineer, Android Platform In 2021, we are continuing with our annual target API level update, requiring new apps to target API level 30 (Android 11) in August and in November for all app updates. In addition, as announced earlier this year, Google Play will require new apps to use the Android App Bundle publishing format. This brings the benefits of smaller apps and simpler releases to more users and developers and supports ongoing investment in advanced distribution. Over 750,000 apps and games already publish to production on Google Play using app bundles. Top apps switching save an average size of 15% versus a universal APK. Users benefit from smaller downloads and developers like Netflix and Riafy see higher install success rates, which is especially impactful in regions with more entry level devices and slower data speeds. Developers switching can use advanced distribution features such as Play Asset Delivery and Play Feature Delive...

Posted by Krish Vitaldevara, Director of Product Management Trust & Safety, Google Play When it comes to privacy, we are committed to giving users control and transparency over data access. Users consistently tell us that they want more control over their location data, so earlier this year we announced a few privacy improvements, such as updates to Google Play’s Location Permissions policy and enhancements to location permission controls in Android 11 . To help prevent unnecessary access to background location, the updated policy allows access only if it’s critical to the app’s core functionality and provides clear user benefit. We found that many apps that requested background location don’t actually need it. Removing or changing it to foreground can help apps be battery-efficient and avoid poor app ratings when users don’t want to share their location. If your app uses background location data, you must submit a form for review and receive approval by January 18, 2021 so your ...

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Global Marketing, Platforms & Ecosystems We are launching the second series of the Apps, Games, & Insights podcast. Over the summer, we teamed up with a new group of leading industry insiders and experts to bring you 8 new podcast episodes over the next couple of months. We are bringing you their exceptional business stories, experiences and discussion on some of the latest big questions in the apps and games industry. We are joined again by your hosts—Tamzin Taylor, who heads up Apps & Games Business Development for Google Play in Western Europe, and Dirk Primbs, who leads the Ecosystem Developer Relations team in Europe— and you can find out who they have been cajoling and corralling in the new series, below. In the first series , the guests covered topics ranging from responsible growth and building for the long term, through advice from mergers and acquisitions and venture capital experts, to hot topics such as privacy and accessibi...

By Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play App Safety At Google Play, we want to foster an ecosystem of safe, engaging, useful, and entertaining apps used and loved by billions of Android users worldwide. That’s why we regularly update and revise our Google Play Developer Policies and Developer Distribution Agreement, detailing the boundaries of app content and functionalities allowed on the platform, as well as providing latest guidance on how developers can promote and monetize apps. In recent efforts in analyzing apps for policy compliance on Google Play we identified some common mistakes and violations that developers make, and we’re sharing these with the developer community with tips and guides on how to avoid them, mitigating the risks of apps and developer accounts being suspended for violating our policies. Links that take users back to other apps on the Play Store One of the most common mistakes we see are apps that have buttons and menus that link out to the Play Store -- e...

Steve Suppe, Product Manager, Google Play Publishing your app or game is one of the most important moments in your app’s lifecycle. You want everything to go smoothly, from making sure the production release is stable, to getting test releases out quickly, to getting your marketing message just right. That’s why visibility is key. Knowing when your app is in review, when it’s been approved, and when it can go live on Google Play helps you set your own schedule. Now, with two new features in the new Google Play Console , you can do just that. The Publishing overview page helps you better understand your publishing process and Managed publishing gives you better control of when your app updates go live on Google Play. When the new Play Console rolls out to everyone starting November 2 , these features will be the recommended way to control your release timing, so let’s take a closer look. Publishing overview The new Publishing overview page displays all your recent c...

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 alre...

Posted by Dan Galpin , Developer Advocate This blog post is part of a weekly series for #11WeeksOfAndroid . For each of the #11WeeksOfAndroid, we’re diving into key areas so you don’t miss anything. This week, we spotlighted games, media, and 5G; here’s a look at what you should know. What's the buzz in Android 11? You can now control media applications from a dedicated space within the notification area while enabling features such as playback resumption and seamless transfer. New and updated 5g APIs help you unlock transformative new user experiences. Adds new support for key game tools and technologies. On top of that foundation, we're building tools to both improve your game developer experience and help you better characterize the performance of your game, services to help you expand the reach of your game to more devices and new audiences, and new and improved features to support your games' go-to-market with Google Play. Android 11 media We covered how to take adva...