Publish to the Google Play Store

In June 2020, Google introduced the new Google Play Console and in November of the same year, it began to discontinue the old Play Console. Now, all developers use the new Play Console, which you can access using: play.google.com/console.

The new Google Play Console is built on Google Material, which the UI design system for all Google-branded products. Hence it is responsive, so you can use it across your devices.The responsive design also supports right-to-left languages including Arabic, Farsi etc.

The new updated navigation makes it easier to find all the tools for your job. The navigation groups related features based on what you want to achieve. Release, Grow, Quality, Monetize and Policy are now Main groups and you see sub items under each of these.

The new console Inbox shows you key messages sent to you from Google Play. Here you can find information and reminders about policy updates, new features that google play team has released and any issues that play team has found in your apps or accounts.

You can add filters to your messages and also move the messages to Archive, once you have read them or acted upon them.

The new Google Play Console includes features, insights, and data to help every member of your team, like engineers, PMs, QAs, marketing managers and executives. There is full user search and bulk-edit capabilities to make managing your teams easier.

The New team-member management area is updated with better, more granular controls. The new permission names and descriptions are clearer, so you can understand what you are — and aren’t — allowing people to do. There’s clearer differentiation between global and app-level permissions.

You can use managed publishing to control exactly when changes to your app are published. When managed publishing is switched on, you can see what changes you submit are in review and what changes are ready for publishing on the Publishing overview page. Managed Publishing also helps you understand all the changes that have been submitted across your releases, store listings etc.

The new releases overview now gives you a snapshot of all your tracks, this helps you see the summary about your latest releases to internal, closed, and open testing tracks, as well as your production track.

You can also filter releases by Track, Version code, Country or region and last updated.

Navigation for Release now contains separate pages for different testing tracks like

Internal testing, Open OR Closed testing and Production. This makes it easier for your team to understand the status of app’s tracks at a glance so they can release with confidence.

Once your app is in Production, Release dashboard gives you most up to date metrics about your releases for production.

This release dashboard is now moved to production track to manage rollout and check performance of your release.

Management of countries/regions where your app is released is available right on this production track page.

Device catalog is redesigned. View all the devices that your app is available on and those that you are excluding. Search and filter the entire catalog of Android devices and save your results to easily reference later. View detailed per-device information including CPU, RAM, form factor and system features.

In Advanced settings, Quickly unpublish or publish an existing app using App Availability. Also Manage the availability of your app on different Android devices and platforms using Release Types.

There are now More ways to get the answers you need, even faster. The new Policy status and App content sections make it easier for you to provide information Google Play needs.You can now use these sections to confirm that your apps are compliant with the policies.

and using policy status, you can quickly check if there is an issue that needs to be addressed.

There are tons of changes in new google play console and you have seen many of them in this episode. However, the list is still long and there are educational pages and course created by Google Play team to learn more.

This is a course available on Google Play Academy for Google Play Console

You can listen to Google play console webinars as well.

You can refer to Educational pages. Click on Learn More under **What’s new in Google Play ** to get the latest updates from Android Dev Summit 2021 You can either watch videos OR Click Read blog

This blog highlights what is annnounced in Android dev summit 2021 - i.e. it includes new features that google play team has been building.

Recently, team announced that starting 1st January, 2022, they are decreasing the service fee for all subscriptions on Google Play from 30% to 15%. Similar reduction was announced for Apps and InApp products sold through google play starting 1st July, 2021 for first $1M (USD) of earnings each year.

The upcoming Data safety section in the Play Store, will let users know what type of data your app collects and shares and how that data is used.

Starting October 2021, developers can start declaring information in Google play console. Users will see the new Data safety section in the Play Store starting in February 2022. Developers will have time until April 2022 for thier apps to have this section completed and approved.

It easier for you to be alerted to and fix new issues with improvements to Android vitals.

Team recently launched a new tool in Play Console called Reach and devices to help you understand which features or fixes would help you reach the most users on Google Play.

One of the most important ways that users assess your app is by checking your ratings and reviews.

Starting November 2021, users on phones will start to see ratings specific to their registered country. Then, in early 2022, users will see ratings specific to the device that they’re on.

You can preview your location-specific and device-specific ratings in Play Console now, and goole play team encourages you to check them out so you have time to make any required app quality improvements before the new ratings go into effect in the Play Store.

Billing Library version 3, which was announced June 2020, includes new ways for users to pay, subscription promotion capabilities etc. Starting 1st November 2021, all updates to existing apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer.

A new feature called In App Messaging will be available in the next Billing Library release. This new API that can detect whether a subscription user is in payment decline and show a helpful message right in your app, so the user can immediately fix the payment without leaving the app to go to the Play Store.

There are updates for Play Games Services in this area.

Google play team announced the launch of the Google Play Store Listing Certificate. To get certified, app developers and marketers can take online training that will help you best tell your app or game’s story on Google Play. After the training, take the exam to get an industry-recognized certificate.

You will find links for all these three open tabs in the Resources for this Episode. Time now for next step : Best Practices for Google Play Store listing in the next episode. Exciting, isn’t it?