Changes to the Google Play Developer API

Posted by Vlad Radu, Product Manager and Nicholas Lativy, Software Engineer

The Google Play Developer API allows you to automate your in-app billing and app distribution workflows. At Google I/O ‘18, we introduced version 3 of the API, which allows you to transactionally start, manage, and halt staged releases on all tracks, through production, open testing, closed testing (including the new additional testing tracks), and internal testing.

Updating from versions 1 and 2 to the latest version 3

In addition to these new features, version 3 also supports all the functionality of previous versions, improving and simplifying how you manage workflows. Starting December 1, 2019, versions 1 and 2 of the Google Play Developer API will no longer be available so you need to update to version 3 ahead of this date.

Migrating to version 3

If you use the Google Play API client libraries (available for Java, Python, and other popular languages), we recommend upgrading to their latest versions, which already support version 3 of the API. In many cases, changing the version of the client library should be all that is necessary. However, you may also need to update specific code references to the version of the API in use - see examples in our samples repository.

Usage of the API can also be indirect, not by the app itself, but by a third-party plugin (e.g. a plugin for rolling out new releases). Many third-party plugins are already using version 3 of the API. If you use a plugin that does not support version 3, you will need to contact the maintainer.

Warnings in Play Console

Google Play Console has been displaying warnings since mid-May if we detected that your app was still using version 1 and version 2 endpoints. The message is based on all calls to the API in the last seven days and is refreshed daily. If you see this message, it means calls to the Publishing API version 1 or 2 are referencing your app.

For version 1 users

If you currently use version 1 of the API, you may also need to link your API project to the Google Console before converting to version 3. Learn more about this process.

For in-app billing developers

This deprecation only affects the APIs which are used to interact with Play Billing via server to server communication. Android apps that use the AIDL / Billing Library to provide in-app purchase functionality are unaffected.

Going forward

We hope you benefit from the new features of the Google Play Developer API and are looking forward to your continued feedback to help us improve the publishing experience on Google Play.

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