Publish to the Google Play Store

Transcript: 01. Overview & Requirements You just finished developing a visually appealing and fully functional Android app. And now you are ready to share your creation with the world. Soon, it'll reside not only on your Android device, but on the devices of people around the globe. It's an exciting step, isn't it? Myself Bhavna Thakkar. Welcome to Publishing to the Play Store course. In this course, you'll learn how to prepare your app for release, what's new in Google Play Console, learn how to create a store listing, how to build a release ready bundle, learn about different testing tracks and how to create a test as well as production release, learn about recent Google Play policy updates, also learn about different types of rejections in Google Play and how to handle each of them. Please note that in June, 2020, Google introduced new Google Play Console UI. Also, there are several key Google Play policy enforcements in 2021 and some plan for 2022. So, it'll be very exciting as well as important to learn this. To upload an app to Google Play Store, you need several things like, a Google account, $25 fee for Google Play Developer Account. This is one time fee. Android Studio to build release ready bundle, Feature Graphic and High Res Icon that will appear on Play Store. A physical device, it is not required, but recommended. You may test your app on an emulator, but Official Developer Documentation recommends that you should thoroughly test the release version on at least one target handset device and one target tablet device. In order to upload an app to Google Play Store, you need access to Google Play Console. To access Google Play Console, you need to have a Google Play Developer Account. So the overall process to upload an app to Play Store is as follows. First you need to create a Google Play Developer Account, if you don't already have one. You must be at least 18 years of age to sign up for a Google Play Developer Account. Second, you need to create a release ready App Bundle using Android Studio. Third, you will have to create a store listing which includes title, short as well as long description, feature graphics, screenshots, et cetera. And finally, you will upload your bundle for testing in Google Play, post which you will release it to end users. At a broad level, when you publish an application, you perform two main tasks. First, you prepare your app for release. Here you configure, build and test your app in release mode. Please note that as a developer, you quite often test your app in debug mode during development but testing the app in release mode is also a crucial step. During the release step, you publicize, sell and distribute the release version of your application to users. In the next episode, you will learn how to prepare your app for release. So stay tuned.