Android Developers Blog

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...

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 ...

Posted by Krish Vitaldevara, Director of Product Management Trust & Safety, Google Play Last year, we made several changes to our platform and policies to increase user trust and safety. We’re proud of the work we’ve done to improve family safety , limit use of sensitive permissions , and catch bad actors before they ever reach the Play Store. We realize that changes can lead to work for developers. Last year, you told us that you wanted more detailed communications about impactful updates, why we’re making them, and how to take action. You also asked for as much time as possible to make any changes required. With that feedback in mind, today, we’re previewing Android and Google Play policy changes that will impact how developers access location in the background. Giving users more control over their location data Users consistently tell us that they want more control over their location data and that we should take every precaution to prevent misuse. Since the beginning of Androi...