Android Developers Blog

Grow your app business internationally through localization on Google Play

16 January 2019

Posted by Chris Yang, Program Manager, Translation Service It is not uncommon for developers to have the following concerns and thoughts when considering whether to localize their apps: "I just don't have the time!" "Translation is too expensive." "High-quality translation is just hard to find.'' Does this sound familiar? At Google, we consider translation a key component of making the world's information universally accessible and useful. This commitment extends not only to localizing our own products, but also to providing tools to help developers and translators more easily localize their apps. Introducing the Google Play App Translation Service Available in the Google Play Console, the Google Play App Translation Service simplifies localization of your app user interface strings, store listing, in-app product names, and universal apps campaign ads. Thousands of developers have already used this service to reach hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Here is an overview of some of the ways it can help: 1. Quick and easy - Order in minutes and receive your translation in as little as two days.

Small translation orders can be completed in only two days. All orders are completed in eight days or less.

Apply translations directly in the Play Console or download to build with your app.

2. Professional and human - Get high-quality translations by real human translators.

All translations are carefully crafted by professional translators just for you.

Translation providers are selected by Google based on quality and speed.

3. Value for money - Translate your app for as little as $0.07 per word.

Pricing is upfront and simple. You only pay per word for each language you translate.

For example, translating 200 words into one language at $0.07 per word would cost only $14.

Ordering a Translation Find the Translation Service in the Google Play Console:

When you're ready to translate, just select the languages to use for translation, choose a vendor, and place your order.

Select languages to translate into.

Choose what type of content you want to translate.

Easily complete purchase of the service. Language recommendations You can also expand your global footprint with translation recommendations that can help increase installs. The recommendations can be found in the Google Play Console.

The language recommendation feature is developed using machine learning and is based on your app's install history and market data. Did you know that you can reach almost 80% of internet users worldwide with only 10 languages. In particular, the Google Play opportunity in Russia and the Middle East continues to grow. Let us know once you have localized for these markets so we can consider featuring your app or game in the Now in Russian and Now in Arabic collections on the Play Store. Launching the translation Once you download the translation, you'll be ready to publish your newly translated app update on Google Play. Get started with the App Translation Service today and let us know what you think!

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Get your apps ready for the 64-bit requirement

15 January 2019

Posted by Vlad Radu, Product Manager, Play and Diana Wong, Product Manager, Android64-bit CPUs deliver faster, richer experiences for your users. Adding a 64-bit version of your app provides performance improvements, makes way for future innovation, and sets you up for devices with 64-bit only hardware.We want to help you get ready and know you need time to plan. We’ve supported 64-bit CPUs since Android 5.0 Lollipop and in 2017 we first announced that apps using native code must provide a 64-bit version (in addition to the 32-bit version). Today we’re providing more detailed information and timelines to make it as easy as possible to transition in 2019.The 64-bit requirement: what it means for developersStarting August 1, 2019:

All new apps and app updates that include native code are required to provide 64-bit versions in addition to 32-bit versions when publishing to Google Play.

Extension: Google Play will continue to accept 32-bit only updates to existing games that use Unity 5.6 or older until August 2021.

Starting August 1, 2021:

Google Play will stop serving apps without 64-bit versions on 64-bit capable devices, meaning they will no longer be available in the Play Store on those devices.

This will include games built with Unity 5.6 or older.

The requirement does not apply to:

APKs or app bundles explicitly targeting Wear OS or Android TV, which are form factors that do not currently support 64-bit code.

APKs or app bundles that are not distributed to devices running Android 9 Pie or later.

We are not making changes to our policy on 32-bit support. Play will continue to deliver apps to 32-bit devices. This requirement means that apps with 32-bit native code will need to have an additional 64-bit version as well.

Preparing for the 64-bit requirementWe anticipate that for most developers, the move to 64-bit should be straightforward. Many apps are written entirely in non-native code (e.g. the Java programming language or Kotlin) and do not need code changes.All developers: Here is an overview of the steps you will need to take in order to become 64-bit compliant. For a more detailed outline of this process refer to our in-depth documentation.Inspect your APK or app bundle for native code. You can check for .so files using APK Analyzer. Identify whether they are built from your own code or are imported by an SDK or library that you are using. If you do not have any .so files in your APK, you are already 64-bit compliant.Enable 64-bit architectures and rebuild native code (.so files) imported by your own code. See the documentation for more details.

Upgrade any SDKs and libraries to 64-bit compliant versions, if needed. Reach out to the SDK or library owner if one is not available. We’re working with top library owners on their 64-bit compatibility.

Test for issues locally once you’ve rebuilt your app.

Rollout to your testers using testing tracks for thorough testing.

Game developers: The three most used engines all currently support 64-bit (Unreal & Cocos2d since 2015, Unity since 2018). We understand that migrating a 3rd party game engine is an intensive process with long lead times.Since Unity only recently began providing 64-bit support in versions 2017.4 and 2018.2, we are granting an automatic extension to existing games using versions 5.6 or older until August 2021. Unity provides guides that can help you through the process of upgrading to a 64-bit compliant version.SDK and library owners: Update for 64-bit compliance as soon as possible to give app developers time to adapt, and let your developers know. Sign up and register your SDK to receive updates about the latest tools and information that can help you serve your customers.Going forwardFor those that already support 64-bit - thank you and great work! If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to begin any work for the 64-bit requirement as soon as possible. As we move closer to the deadline, we’ll be updating our developer documentation with more information on how to check if your app is compliant.We’re excited about the future that 64-bit CPUs bring in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and immersive mobile. Supporting 64-bit prepares the ecosystem for the innovation enabled by the advanced compute capabilities of 64-bit devices, and for future Android devices that only support 64-bit code.

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Reminder SMS/Call Log Policy Changes

14 January 2019

Posted by Paul Bankhead, Director, Product Management, Google Play TLDR; As previously announced and directly communicated to developers via email, we'll be removing apps from the Google Play Store that ask for SMS or Call Log permission and have not submitted a Permissions Declaration Form. If you have not submitted a permissions declaration form and your app is removed, see below for next steps. We take access to sensitive data and permissions very seriously. This is especially true with SMS and Call Log permissions, which were designed to allow users to pick their favorite dialer or messaging app, but have also been used to enable many other experiences that might not require that same level of access. In an effort to improve users' control over their data, last October we announced we would be restricting developer access to SMS and Call Log permissions. Our new policy is designed to ensure that apps asking for these permissions need full and ongoing access to the sensitive data in order to accomplish the app's primary use case, and that users will understand why this data would be required for the app to function. Developers whose apps used these permissions prior to our announcement were notified by email and given 90 days to either remove the permissions, or submit a permissions declaration form to enable further review. More about app reviews We take this review process seriously and understand it's a change for many developers. We apply the same criteria to all developers, including dozens of Google apps. We added to the list of approved use cases over the last few months as we evaluated feedback from developers. Our global teams carefully review each submission. During the review process, we consider the following:

Likelihood that an average user would understand why this type of app needs full access to the data.

User benefit of the feature.

Importance of the permission relative to the core functionality of the app.

Risks presented by all apps with this use case having access to this sensitive data.

Availability of more narrow alternatives for enabling the feature.

With this change, some uses cases will no longer be allowed. However, many of the apps we reviewed with one of these permissions can rely on narrower APIs, reducing the scope of access while accomplishing similar functionality. For example, developers using SMS for account verification can alternatively use the SMS Retriever API, and apps that want to share content using SMS can prepopulate a message and trigger the default SMS app to show via intents. Tens of thousands of developers have already resubmitted their apps to support the new policy or have submitted a form. Thank you! Developers who submitted a form received a compliance extension until March 9th. Next steps Over the next few weeks, we will be removing apps from the Play Store that ask for SMS or Call Log permission and have not submitted a permission declaration form. If your app is removed and you would like to have it republished, you can do one of the following in the Play Console:

submit a new version without these permissions, or

submit a new version of your app that retains the permissions. Doing so will require you to complete a permissions declaration form inside the Play Console (coming soon) and will give you an extension until March 9th to remove the permissions or receive approval for your use case.

Keeping our overall Android ecosystem healthy is very important, and protection of user data is vital to the long term health of all developers. We know these changes have required significant work from you and we appreciate your efforts to create innovative experiences while protecting user's privacy.

Android Studio 3.3

14 January 2019

Posted by Jamal Eason, Product Manager

We are excited to kick off the new year with a stable release of Android Studio 3.3 focused on refinement and quality. You can download it today from developer.android.com/studio. Based on the feedback from many of you, we have taken a step back from large features to focus on our quality fundamentals. The goal is to ensure Android Studio continues to help you stay productive in making great apps for Android. Since the last stable release, Android Studio 3.3 addresses over 200 user- reported bugs. This release also includes official support for Navigation Editor, improved incremental Java compilation when using annotation processors, C++ code lint inspections, an updated new project wizard, and usability fixes for each of the performance profilers. In addition, saving snapshots on exit for the Android emulator is 8x faster. Android Studio 3.3 kicks off the broader quality focus area for the year, which we call Project Marble. Announced at the Android Developer Summit in November 2018, Project Marble is the Android Studio team's focus on making the fundamental features and flows of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) rock-solid, along with refining and polishing the user-facing features that matter to you in your day-to-day app development workflows. In Project Marble, we are specifically looking at reducing the number of crashes, hangs, memory leaks, and user-impacting bugs. We are also investing in our measurement infrastructure to prevent these issues from occurring. Stay tuned for more updates and details as we progress on this initiative. This release of Android Studio is a solid milestone for the product. If you want the latest in feature refinement and quality, then download Android Studio 3.3 today on the stable release channel. Watch and read below for some of the notable changes and enhancements that you will find in Android Studio 3.3. Develop

Navigation Editor - The navigation editor is a visual editor which allows you to construct XML resources that support using the new Jetpack Navigation Component. With the Navigation Editor and the Navigation Component, you can build predictable interactions between the screens and content areas of your app. This editor was previewed in an earlier Android Studio release, but based on your feedback we held this feature to improve the quality of the feature. Thank you to the developers who gave us feedback. Learn more.

Navigation Editor

IntelliJ Platform Update - Android Studio 3.3 includes Intellij 2018.2.2. This is a significant platform release from Jetbrains, with new previews for the code editor, updated icons, MacBook Touch Bar support, plus enhanced version control integrations. Learn more.

Kotlin Update - This release of Android Studio bundles Kotlin 1.3.11, with support for Kotlin coroutines and contracts plus IDE support for the recommend Kotlin coding style. Learn more.

Clang-Tidy Support for C++ - Android Studio now has support for Clang-Tidy for C++ static code analysis. Similar to the current lint support for Java and Kotlin in Android Studio, Clang-Tidy helps those who have C++ in their Android app identify common coding errors and bugs. Enable the inspection by going to Settings → Editor → Inspections (Preference → Editor → Inspections for MacOS) . Learn more.

Clang-Tidy Code Inspection Settings

New Project Wizard update - To support the range of device types, programming languages, and new frameworks, we have updated the New Project Wizard for Android Studio. You can access the same project templates in a more streamlined user experience.

New Project Wizard

Delete Unused IDE Directories - To help you upgrade to the newest version of Android Studio, we have added a new feature to help clean up unused settings & cache directories. Past versions of Android Studio left these old directories that were hard to find and remove on your hard drive. When you first run Android Studio 3.3 and higher, the new dialog suggests directories that you can safely remove from past installations of Android Studio.

Delete Unused Directories Dialogue

IDE User Feedback - To help us to create a better product, we have started to include in-product sentiment buttons for quick feedback. For those who opt-in to sharing usage data, feel free to click on the icon that suits your sentiment while using Android Studio. To opt-in to give in-product feedback go to Settings → Appearance & Behavior → System Settings → Data Sharing ( Preferences → Appearance & Behavior → System Settings → Data Sharing for MacOS).

IDE User Feedback Build

Improved incremental Java compilation when using annotation processor - This update decreases build time by improving support for incremental Java compilation when using annotation processors. The optimization requires Android Gradle plugin 3.3.0 or higher. Learn more.

Lazy task configuration - The plugin uses Gradle's new task creation API to avoid initializing and configuring tasks that are not required to complete the current build (or tasks not on the execution task graph). For example, if you have multiple build variants, such as "release" and "debug" build variants, and you're building the "debug" version of your app, the plugin avoids initializing and configuring tasks for the "release" version of your app. Learn more.

Single-variant project sync - Along with build speed, project sync speed can be a development bottleneck to for those who have large app projects with multiple build variants. In this version of the IDE, you can you can limit syncing to only the active build variant. In order for this optimization to work, your project needs to use Android Gradle plugin 3.3.0 or higher. You can enable this option under the Experimental preferences in Android Studio 3.3.

Single-Variant Project Sync

Android App Bundles now support Instant Apps - You can now build and deploy Google Play Instant experiences from a single Android Studio project, and include them in a single Android App Bundle. Launched last year, the Android App Bundle is the new standard Android app publishing format that you can build with Android Studio. This update streamlines and unifies the build artifacts that you upload to Google Play. Learn more.

Test

Multiple Emulator AVD instances - Android Emulator 28.0 now supports the ability to launch multiple instances of the same Android Virtual Device (AVD). Each instance of the AVD uses a minimal set of system resources. For those developers with continuous integration (CI) testing environments, this can be a convenient way to run tests in parallel off one AVD configuration. On the command line run the following commands:

$./emulator -avd <avdname> -read-only &
$./emulator -avd <avdname> -read-only &

Android Emulator: Multiple AVD Launch

Android 9 Pie Emulator System Images & Wi-Fi P2P - Alongside Android Studio 3.3, you can also download Android 9 system images for your emulator for your app testing. The Google Play emulator system images not only passe the official Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), they also include support for Peer-to-Peer Wi-Fi direct connections between two emulators. To start using this feature, launch the emulator (v28.0.22 or higher) via the command line and ensure the two emulators share the same Wi-Fi server and client port command line arguments.

$./emulator @<server-avd-name> -wifi-server-port 9999
$./emulator @<client-avd-name> -wifi-client-port 9999

Android Emulator: Wi-Fi P2P Setup

Emulator Snapshot Save Speed - We have heard from you that you enjoy using snapshots and quickboot, but felt the time taken to close the emulator and Quickboot save a snapshot was slow. To solve this, we optimized the way snapshots are saved and managed, using a mapped file to save guest RAM. From aggregate metrics, we found that this optimization led to driving down the average quickboot save time from the last stable version to now from 27 seconds down to 3 seconds — a 8x improvement. Learn more about this enhancement and other recent improvements to the emulator here.

Optimize

Profiler performance improvements - Based on your feedback, we have dramatically improved Android Studio performance while using the profilers in this release. We've seen improvements on average of 2x in frame rates in our local tests. Please continue to provide feedback, especially if you continue to see performance issues.

Memory Profiler allocation tracking options - In previous releases, we have heard from you that, in some cases, your app performs significantly worse while profiling with the default settings. To address this, we have changed the default Memory Profiler capture mode on Android 8.0 Oreo (API level 26) and higher devices to sample for allocations periodically. You can adjust this setting in the Allocation Tracking dropdown menu. By default, we also now temporarily turn off allocation tracking during CPU recordings to minimize the impact on recording results. Learn more.

Memory Profiler: Allocation Tracking Options

Network Profiler formatted text - The Network profiler in Android Studio 3.3 now formats common text types found in network payloads by default, including HTML, XML and JSON. You can toggle between formatted and raw text by navigating to either the Response or Request tab, and click on the View Parsed / View Source link. Learn more.

Network Profiler: Formatted Text

CPU Profiler frame rendering data - The CPU Profiler now shows you the render time for each frame on the main UI thread and Render Thread when you record with Trace System Calls. If you are trying to investigate and understand the bottlenecks or the source of UI jank in your app, this data can come in handy to see where you can improve your app performance. Learn more.

CPU Profiler: Frame Rendering Data To recap, Android Studio 3.3 includes these new enhancements & features: Develop

Navigation Editor

IntelliJ 2018.2.2 Platform Update

Kotlin 1.3.11 Update

Clang-Tidy Support for C++

New Project Wizard update

Delete Unused IDE Directories

IDE User Feedback

Build

Improved incremental Java compilation when using annotation processors

Lazy task configuration:

Single-variant project sync

Android App Bundles now supports Instant Apps

Test

Multiple Emulator AVD instance Launch

Android 9 Pie - Emulator System Images

Emulator Snapshot Save Speed Improvement

Optimize

Profiler Performance Improvements

Memory Profiler: Allocation Tracking Options

Network Profiler: Formatted Text

CPU Profiler: Frame Rendering Data

Check out the Android Studio release notes, Android Gradle plugin release notes, and the Android Emulator release notes for more details. Getting Started Download Download the latest version of Android Studio 3.3 from the download page. If you are using a previous release of Android Studio, you can simply update to the latest version of Android Studio as well. If you want to maintain a stable version of Android Studio, you can run the stable release version and canary release versions of Android Studio at the same time. Learn more. To use the mentioned Android Emulator features make sure you are running at least Android Emulator v28.0.22 downloaded via the Android Studio SDK Manager. We appreciate any feedback on things you like, and issues or features you would like to see. If you find a bug or issue, feel free to file an issue. Follow us -- the Android Studio development team ‐ on Twitter and on Medium.

Android Pie à la mode: Security & Privacy

20 December 2018

Posted by Vikrant Nanda and René Mayrhofer, Android Security & Privacy Team

There is no better time to talk about Android dessert releases than the holidays because who doesn't love dessert? And what is one of our favorite desserts during the holiday season? Well, pie of course. In all seriousness, pie is a great analogy because of how the various ingredients turn into multiple layers of goodness: right from the software crust on top to the hardware layer at the bottom. Read on for a summary of security and privacy features introduced in Android Pie this year. Strengthening Android Making Android more secure requires a combination of hardening the platform and advancing anti-exploitation techniques. Platform hardening With Android Pie, we updated File-Based Encryption to support external storage media (such as, expandable storage cards). We also introduced support for metadata encryption where hardware support is present. With filesystem metadata encryption, a single key present at boot time encrypts whatever content is not encrypted by file-based encryption (such as, directory layouts, file sizes, permissions, and creation/modification times). Android Pie also introduced a BiometricPrompt API that apps can use to provide biometric authentication dialogs (such as, fingerprint prompt) on a device in a modality-agnostic fashion. This functionality creates a standardized look, feel, and placement for the dialog. This kind of standardization gives users more confidence that they're authenticating against a trusted biometric credential checker. New protections and test cases for the Application Sandbox help ensure all non-privileged apps targeting Android Pie (and all future releases of Android) run in stronger SELinux sandboxes. By providing per-app cryptographic authentication to the sandbox, this protection improves app separation, prevents overriding safe defaults, and (most significantly) prevents apps from making their data widely accessible. Anti-exploitation improvements With Android Pie, we expanded our compiler-based security mitigations, which instrument runtime operations to fail safely when undefined behavior occurs. Control Flow Integrity (CFI) is a security mechanism that disallows changes to the original control flow graph of compiled code. In Android Pie, it has been enabled by default within the media frameworks and other security-critical components, such as for Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth protocols. We also implemented support for CFI in the Android common kernel, continuing our efforts to harden the kernel in previous Android releases. Integer Overflow Sanitization is a security technique used to mitigate memory corruption and information disclosure vulnerabilities caused by integer operations. We've expanded our use of Integer Overflow sanitizers by enabling their use in libraries where complex untrusted input is processed or where security vulnerabilities have been reported. Continued investment in hardware-backed security One of the highlights of Android Pie is Android Protected Confirmation, the first major mobile OS API that leverages a hardware-protected user interface (Trusted UI) to perform critical transactions completely outside the main mobile operating system. Developers can use this API to display a trusted UI prompt to the user, requesting approval via a physical protected input (such as, a button on the device). The resulting cryptographically signed statement allows the relying party to reaffirm that the user would like to complete a sensitive transaction through their app. We also introduced support for a new Keystore type that provides stronger protection for private keys by leveraging tamper-resistant hardware with dedicated CPU, RAM, and flash memory. StrongBox Keymaster is an implementation of the Keymaster hardware abstraction layer (HAL) that resides in a hardware security module. This module is designed and required to have its own processor, secure storage, True Random Number Generator (TRNG), side-channel resistance, and tamper-resistant packaging. Other Keystore features (as part of Keymaster 4) include Keyguard-bound keys, Secure Key Import, 3DES support, and version binding. Keyguard-bound keys enable use restriction so as to protect sensitive information. Secure Key Import facilitates secure key use while protecting key material from the application or operating system. You can read more about these features in our recent blog post as well as the accompanying release notes. Enhancing user privacy User privacy has been boosted with several behavior changes, such as limiting the access background apps have to the camera, microphone, and device sensors. New permission rules and permission groups have been created for phone calls, phone state, and Wi-Fi scans, as well as restrictions around information retrieved from Wi-Fi scans. We have also added associated MAC address randomization, so that a device can use a different network address when connecting to a Wi-Fi network. On top of that, Android Pie added support for encrypting Android backups with the user's screen lock secret (that is, PIN, pattern, or password). By design, this means that an attacker would not be able to access a user's backed-up application data without specifically knowing their passcode. Auto backup for apps has been enhanced by providing developers a way to specify conditions under which their app's data is excluded from auto backup. For example, Android Pie introduces a new flag to determine whether a user's backup is client-side encrypted. As part of a larger effort to move all web traffic away from cleartext (unencrypted HTTP) and towards being secured with TLS (HTTPS), we changed the defaults for Network Security Configuration to block all cleartext traffic. We're protecting users with TLS by default, unless you explicitly opt-in to cleartext for specific domains. Android Pie also adds built-in support for DNS over TLS, automatically upgrading DNS queries to TLS if a network's DNS server supports it. This protects information about IP addresses visited from being sniffed or intercepted on the network level. We believe that the features described in this post advance the security and privacy posture of Android, but you don't have to take our word for it. Year after year our continued efforts are demonstrably resulting in better protection as evidenced by increasing exploit difficulty and independent mobile security ratings. Now go and enjoy some actual pie while we get back to preparing the next Android dessert release!

Acknowledgements: This post leveraged contributions from Chad Brubaker, Janis Danisevskis, Giles Hogben, Troy Kensinger, Ivan Lozano, Vishwath Mohan, Frank Salim, Sami Tolvanen, Lilian Young, and Shawn Willden.

Wrapping up for 2018 with Google Play and Android

18 December 2018

Posted by Patricia Correa, Platforms & Ecosystems

Earlier this year we highlighted some of Google Play's milestones and commitments in supporting the 1M+ developers on the Play Store, as well as those of you working on Android apps and games and looking to launch and grow your business on our platforms. We have been inspired and humbled by the achievements of app and game developers, building experiences that delight and help people everywhere, as some stories highlighted in #IMakeApps. We continue to focus on helping you grow thriving businesses and building tools and resources to help you reach and engage more users in more places, whilst ensuring a safe and secure ecosystem. Looking to 2019, we are excited about all the things to come and seeing more developers adopt new features and update to Android P. In the meantime let's share some of the 2018 highlights on Google Play and Android: Building for the future Along with Android P we have continued to help the Android developer ecosystem, launching Android Jetpack, the latest Android Studio, and Kotlin support. Developers are also now able to add rich and dynamic UI templates with Slices in places such as Google Search and Assistant, APIs for new screens support, and much more. Discover the latest from Android 9, API Level 28.

Smaller apps have higher conversion rates and our research shows that a large app size is a key driver of uninstalls. At I/O we launched a new publishing format, the Android App Bundle, helping developers to deliver smaller and more efficient apps with a simplified release process, and with features on demand - saving on average 35% in download size! On devices using Android M and above, app bundles can reduce app size even further, by automatically supporting uncompressed native libraries, thereby eliminating duplication on devices. You can build app bundles in the Android Studio 3.2 stable release and in Unity 2018.3 beta, and upload larger bundles with installed APK sizes of up to 500MB without using expansion files, through an early access feature soon to be available to all developers. Richer experiences and discovery Discovery of your apps and games is important, so we launched Google Play Instant and increased the size limit to 10MB to enable TRY NOW on the Play Store, and removed the URL requirement for Instant apps. Android Studio 3.3 beta release, lets you publish a single app bundle and classify it or a particular module to be instant enabled (without maintaining separate code). For game developers, Unity introduced the Google Play Instant plug-in and instant app support is built into the new Cocos Creator. Our app pre-registration program, has seen nearly 250 million app pre-registrations, helping drive app downloads through richer discovery. Optimizing for quality and performance

Android vitals are now more actionable, with a dashboard highlighting core vitals, peer benchmarks, start-up time and permission denials vitals, anomaly detection and alerts, and linking pre-launch reports - all so that you can better optimize and prioritize issues for improved quality and performance. There are more opportunities to get feedback and fix issues before launch. The Google Play Console expanded the functionality of automated device testing with a pre-launch report for games, and the launch of the internal and closed test tracks lets you push your app to up to 100 internal testers, before releasing them to production. Insights for your business, now and in the long term Metrics are critical to optimize your business and we've added new customizable tools in the Play Console, with downloadable reports to help you evaluate core metrics. Including cumulative data, 30-day rolling averages, and roll-ups for different time periods to better match the cadence of your business. You can now configure the statistics report to show how your instant apps are performing, analyze different dimensions and identify how many install the final app on their device. The acquisition report shows users discovery journey through to conversion - with average revenue per user and retention benchmarks against similar apps. You can also find the best performing search terms for your store listing with organic breakdown - helping to optimize efforts to grow and retain a valuable audience. Increasingly developers are adopting subscriptions as their core monetization model. The dedicated new subscriptions center means you can easily change subscription prices, offer partial refunds for in-app products and subscriptions, and also make plan changes in Play Billing Library version 1.2. Learn how to keep subscribers engaged; users can pause plans, giving you more control with order management and the cancellation survey.

Discover how to use all the new features and best practices on the Academy for App Success, our interactive free e-learning platform, offering bite-sized courses that help you make the most of Play Console and improve your app quality. Make sure you follow @googleplaydev and sign up to our newsletter to stay ahead of all our updates in 2019! We hope these features and tools will enable us to continue a successful partnership with you in the New Year - follow our countdown for a daily highlight. From all of us at Google Play - happy holidays.

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In reviews we trust — Making Google Play ratings and reviews more trustworthy

17 December 2018

Posted by Fei Ye, Software Engineer and Kazushi Nagayama, Ninja Spamologist

Google Play ratings and reviews are extremely important in helping users decide which apps to install. Unfortunately, fake and misleading reviews can undermine users' trust in those ratings. User trust is a top priority for us at Google Play, and we are continuously working to make sure that the ratings and reviews shown in our store are not being manipulated. There are various ways in which ratings and reviews may violate our developer guidelines:

Bad content: Reviews that are profane, hateful, or off-topic.

Fake ratings: Ratings and reviews meant to manipulate an app's average rating or top reviews. We've seen different approaches to manipulate the average rating; from 5-star attacks to positively boost an app's average rating, to 1-star attacks to influence it negatively.

Incentivized ratings: Ratings and reviews given by real humans in exchange for money or valuable items.

When we see these, we take action on the app itself, as well as the review or rating in question. In 2018, the Google Play Trust & Safety teams deployed a system that combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews. A team of engineers and analysts closely monitor and study suspicious activities in Play's ratings and reviews, and improve the model's precision and recall on a regular basis. We also regularly ask skilled reviewers to check the decisions made by our models for quality assurance. It's a big job. To give you a sense of the volume we manage, here are some numbers from a recent week:

Millions of reviews and ratings detected and removed from the Play Store.

Thousands of bad apps identified due to suspicious reviews and rating activities on them.

Our team can do a lot, but we need your help to keep Google Play a safe and trusted place for apps and games. If you're a developer, you can help us by doing the following:

Don't buy fake or incentivized ratings.

Don't run campaigns, in-app or otherwise, like "Give us 5 stars and we'll give you this in-app item!" That counts as incentivized ratings, and it's prohibited by policy.

Do read the Google Play Developer Policy to make sure you are not inadvertently making violations.

Example of a violation: incentivized ratings is not allowed If you're a user, you can follow these simple guidelines as well:

Don't accept or receive money or goods (even virtual ones) in exchange for reviews and ratings.

Don't use profanity to criticize an app or game; keep your feedback constructive.

Don't post gibberish, hateful, sexual, profane or off-topic reviews; they simply aren't allowed.

Do read the comment posting policy. It's pretty concise and talks about all the things you should consider when posting a review to the public.

Finally, if you find bad ratings and reviews on Google Play, help us improve by sending your feedback! Users can mark the review as "Spam" and developers can submit feedback through the Play Console.

Tooltip to flag the review as Spam. Thanks for helping us keep Google Play a safe and trusted place to discover some of the world's best apps and games.

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