Where to upload the definition file for a self hosted (managed) app in the Google Play console on a Google developer account?
I'm developing an app for a customer that uses an EMM (XenMobile) for managing their Android devices.
We are using Android Enterprise (former Android for Work) to create a device owner managed profile on the devices and publish apps using the managed Play store together with XenMobile.
The customer wants to keep the APK within their own premises (and on their own COSU devices) and not host apps at Google. According to Google, this is possible - Google calls it Self hosted private apps and also has articles describing everything but the actual publishing process (https://support.google.com/googleplay/work/answer/6145182?hl=en&ref_topic=6145152).
I have the developer account and the json definition file created from the EMM, but when I try to upload the json instead of the apk file to publish the app, I'm prompted to upload the apk file instead.
My question therefore is - Where am I supposed to upload the definition file?
BR Thomas
The owner of the developer account needs to be an admin of the enterprise in order to be able to publish a self-hosted app on Google Play. Therefore you will need to ask your customer to create a developer account using their admin account and upload the self-hosted app with this account.
Then here are the steps in the Google Play Console:
create a new app,
in "Pricing & distribution > Managed Google Play" select "Turn on advanced managed Google Play features",
and then select "Privately target this app to a list of organizations"
The app should now be targeted to one organization:
After that:
go to "App releases > Production track > Manage" and create a new release,
select "I am uploading a configuration for an APK hosted outside of Google Play",
upload your JSON file.
The interface should look like this:
Testing
If you want to test the app before sending it to your customer you can create a test organization using the Android Management Experience. Just make sure to use a different package name for the app since package names must be unique in Play.
Related
Currently, my Unity Android app that I uploaded as a production on Google Play has a big problem.
We started Google As advertisement and checked the inflow of users (installation of 1,597),
However, there are only 67 users who have actually accessed it...
I downloaded my app that I uploaded to Google Play directly and logged in with my Google account, so there was no problem, and I asked my friend to download and run the app, so there was no problem logging in.
The predictable problem is that due to the number of concurrent users, many users are unable to access when starting the advertisement, or something seems to be wrong with my GPGS setting.
Please check the possible problems and the image of my GPGS setup.
**Setting **
Unity Ver : 2021.3.8f1
GPGS Plugin : 0.10.14
State
Upload Google Console Production
Google Console -> Play Games Services -> Setup And Management -> Configuration -> Publish Complete
Create 3 Google Cloud Platform OAuth Clients
-> Upload key, app signature key, server
1. Suspected Problem 1
If the AndroidManifest.xml Package Name is different from the package name of the Google Console, can the Production user not access it?
Unity -> PlaySetting -> Identification -> Package Name is entered as the package name of the Google Console, but AndroidManifest.xml Package Name is marked as package="com.google.example.games.mainlibproj" and modified it directly to the package name of the Google Console, but it was restored again.
enter image description here
enter image description here
(If it is a problem and you need to check the Unity error list, you can attach it later)
2. Suspected Problem 2
Can't the user access because Unity's keystore certificate is set to upload authentication signature, not app authentication signature?
enter image description here
3. If you have any other problems, please give us your opinion.
I have built a flutter app and i want that our testers will test the app through internal testing in google play using the test database and test api url.
This is doable but it has a drawback. In google play, you can actually use the same build that was published in internal testing to be published as a release version. Since I am using a test database and api on the build, i have to change the settings to use live version and build the apk and upload it again to google play to do so. So whenever i want to have a new release, i need to submit atleast 2 builds.
Do you think this process is proper? If not, do you have any recommendation on how i can share the app to my testers that uses test environment. I have done things like sharing apk manually on microsoft teams but it doesn't feel like the right thing to do according to me.
Well, the best approach would be to create a new flavor for your dev environment instead of just building with differentet variables. Then you can create a new app at appstore named "yourapp dev" with different bundle id, e.g com.yourapp.app.dev and upload your dev builds to internal track of the new dev app. If you don't want to create a new dev app to playstore for distributing, you can also use firebase distribution to share your apk/ipa.
I have an ionic app build on my system.
For now, I have been testing my app using Ionic DevAPP (which can be found on the App Store and Google Play).
Prerequisite to run an app on my mobile device using Ionic DevApp is, My app needs to be up and running using the command:
ionic serve
This option looks great when doing development.
But now, I have my app build and I want to share it with the testing team and PO who is located on shore.
I want to know is there any way or free platform where the users can run an app on their mobile devices directly without starting a dev server.
NOTES:
I know about Ionic dashboard, but it is not free when comes to sharing builds.
I don't want to upload my app on Play Store or Google Play.
Any help is recommended as I am really looking for options to share my app.
I use Diawi To share both apk and ipa, bypassing play/app stores.
Can you upload app in Fastlane command with android and Fastlane app in the google play console or I need to make draft in console before I do?
Fastlane unfortunately can not create an Android app from scratch, as it can with create_app_online (formerly known as produce) for iOS. Google just doesn't offer any API for that.
So yes, you have to at least create the app on the Google Play Console which usually includes uploading a first APK (so the Play Console knows about the package name [com.example.app] or your app) to one of the available lanes (which doesn't have to get published though).
I'm confused by how I can develop a Chrome App with chrome.identity.
The instructions say that I need to add the key to my manifest.json, and that I need to put the extension id in the Google API Console.
I have a published version of the app, and I am currently developing a local copy, so I am loading it unpacked from my local file system.
Can I put the key from the published app in the dev manifest.json?
Does the extension id in the Google API Console need to be of the published app, or my local one?
Yes you should do that to debug chrome.identity without pain.
If you place public key of your published app inside manifest.json, your app will have the same ID as the app in Chrome Web Store.