The latest Android and Google Play news for app and game developers.
Posted by Peter Armitage, Software Engineer, Google Play
Releasing a new version of your app is an exciting moment when your team's hard work finally gets into the hands of your users. However, releasing can also be challenging - you want to keep your existing users happy without introducing performance regressions or bugs. At Google I/O this year, we talked about staged releases as an essential part of how Google does app releases, allowing you to manage the inherent risks of a new release by making a new version of your app available to just a fraction of your users. You can then increase this fraction as you gain confidence that your new version works as expected. We are excited that starting today staged releases will be possible on testing tracks, as well as the production track.
We will take a closer look at how staged releases work, and how you can use them as part of your release process.
The first benefit of a staged release is that it only exposes a fraction of your users to the new version. If the new version contains a bug, only a small number of people will be inconvenienced by it. This is much safer than releasing a new version to all of your users at once.
Another benefit is that if you discover a bug, you can halt the rollout, preventing any new users from downloading that version. Instead, they will receive the previous version.
These capabilities should relieve a lot of the uncertainty of rolling out a new version. And that will allow you to do it more often. We encourage releasing versions of a server more often because it reduces the number of changes between each release, allowing you to more easily test and troubleshoot. The same principle applies to apps, though there will be a delay before most of your users upgrade to the latest version.
Let's look at a typical release process for an app with 100,000 users.
Some apps are just starting out, and although there's no QA team, it's still worth testing the app on a few different devices before releasing it. Instead of having a track for employees, the developer has added their friends and family, who can contact them if they see an issue.
When an app gets larger and uses the open testing track, it may have 5,000 testers. These testers won't give public feedback on the Play store, but will be able to give feedback to the developer directly. If this app has 1 million users, they may first release to 1%, before going to 10%, then 100%.
Once an app becomes very popular, it could have over 100,000 testers. In that case the developer is now able to do a staged release on their testing track.
Bugs happen, and if you discover a problem with your new version you may want to halt the release. This will stop users from getting the new version, either by upgrading or installing for the first time. However, those who have already got the new version will not downgrade.
If the issue was not in the app itself, but on a server that the app communicates with, it may be best to fix the issue in the server, then resume the release. Resuming it allows some fraction of your users to access the new version again. This is the same set of users that were able to download the release before it was halted.
If the issue was in the app, you will have to fix it and release a new version. Or alternatively, you may choose to rebuild the previous version with a higher version code. Then you can start a staged release to the same set of users that the previous release went to.
Staged releases are supported in v3 of the Play Console API on all tracks. Mark a release as "inProgress" and set a fraction of the population to target. For instance, to start a staged release to 5%:
{ "releases": [{ "versionCodes": ["99"], "userFraction": 0.05, "status": "inProgress" }] }
Alternatively, if you release using the UI, it will suggest a fraction.
We hope you find these features useful and take advantage of them for successful updates with Google Play. If you're interested in some of the other great tools for distributing your apps, check out the I/O 2018 sessions, and learn more about test tracks and staged updates.
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Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play
We've updated the Play Console acquisition reports to give new insights into what users do on the Play Store to discover your app. It's a great way to super-charge your App Store Optimization (ASO) and onboarding experience.
One of the things every developer wants to know is how people discover their app or game. User acquisition reports in the Google Play Console are a great way to understand this. For many apps and games, a stand-out source is Organic traffic — it's usually the largest or second largest source of store listing visits and installs.
Organic traffic is made up of people who come to your store listing while exploring or searching the Play Store. These visitors might find your app in a seasonal collection, from featuring, or while searching for a specific use case or term.
Until recently, this traffic has been bundled together with no breakdown of data into user behavior. With our latest updates we have changed this by introducing new and exclusive acquisition insights to the Google Play Console. These enable you to understand what people in the Play Store do to discover your app or game. They reveal how many people discover your app through exploring the store, and how many search to find your app, and even the search terms they use!
App Store Optimization (ASO) is vital to driving your organic traffic and this update enables you to do this with more data and better understanding.
When you visit the user acquisition report, the first change you'll notice is that organic traffic is broken down. This breakdown means you can see how people arrive at your store listing by searching or exploring (actions that aren't search like browsing the homepage, visiting a category list, or viewing related apps).
This change has been of immediate benefit to developers, enabling their growth teams to optimize acquisition strategies. For example, Scopely found that:
"Isolating [explore] from search and then a deeper dive into search gives the whole organic picture. It allows us to focus on acquisition areas that really matter." Dorothee Pinlet, VP Partnerships, Scopely
From the new search row, you can click-through to see the aggregate number of people using different search terms to find your store listing, and which of those lead to the most installs. This breakdown is a view into the Play Store that has not been available before.
Our pilot partners, who helped us refine the feature ahead of launch, were very happy with how this data has helped them make more informed decisions.
Evernote found that the breakdown:
"... offers surprising and actionable insights about the effectiveness of search terms in driving installs and retained users." May Allen, Product Manager, Evernote
Some partners changed their in-app onboarding experience to highlight features that reflected the search terms that were driving installs, to better meet user expectations. While others evaluated if their influencer marketing was having an impact by looking for their advocates' names in the search results after adding them to descriptions.
This change means that your total reported visits and installs are likely to increase as of July 30, 2018. This increase is because previews will be counted as listing views, previously they were included in the category "Installs without store listing visits".
The developers who had the opportunity to test Organic breakdowns have given feedback that they loved them. They've also been kind enough to share some insights into how they plan to use the data. Perhaps these thoughts on how to use the data will spark some ideas for your business.
Some developers will be using this new data to evaluate their acquisition strategies by looking at the breakdown between explore and search. They will use this breakdown to evaluate the impact of exploring behaviors, especially around times when the app has been featured on the Play Store.
Using the information about popular search terms, several developers plan to change their app or game's Google Play listing to reflect user interests better. This change involves adjusting the descriptions and screenshots to tie more directly into the top search terms.
Others plan to use the insight provided by search term information to optimize their in-app onboarding. Here they plan to make sure that the onboarding talks about the features related to the most popular searches people made when discovering their app or game, highlighting and reinforcing the benefits.
Our team is always thinking about the tools we can build to help you optimize the discovery and installation of your app or game from the Play Store. Organic breakdowns is just one of these tools, a new way to help drive your success. Ultimately, your success is what we work towards. Organic breakdowns give you a more comprehensive picture of how people discover you on the Play Store so you can optimize your store presence, turning more visits into installs, and more installs into engaged users.
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Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Google Play, Apps & Games
On Monday we released Android 9 Pie. As we continue to push the Android platform forward, we're always looking to provide new ways to distribute your apps efficiently, help people discover and engage with your work, and improve the overall security of our ecosystem. Google Play has had a busy year so far with some big milestones around helping you reach more users, including:
Google Play is dedicated to helping you build and grow quality app businesses, reach the more than 2 billion Android devices globally and provide your users with better experiences. Here are some of the important areas we're prioritizing this year:
We've added more testing tools to the popular Play Console to help developers de-risk app launches with internal and external test tracks and staged rollouts to get valuable early feedback. This year we've expanded the Start on Android program globally that provides developers new to Android additional guidance to optimize their apps before launch. Google Play Instant remains a huge bet to transform app discovery and improve conversions by letting users engage without the friction of installing. We're seeing great results from early adopters and are working on new places to surface instant experience, including ads, and making them easier to build throughout the year.
Google Play plays an important role helping developers understand and fix quality and performance issues. At I/O, we showcased how we expanded the battery, stability and rendering of Android vitals reporting to include app start time & permission denials, enabling developers to cut application not responding errors by up to 95%. We also expanded the functionality of automated device testing with the pre-launch report to enable games testing. Recently, we increased the importance of app quality in our search and discovery recommendations that has resulted in higher engagement and satisfaction with downloaded games.
Over the last year we've rolled out more editorial content and improved our machine learning to deliver personalized recommendations for apps and games that engage users. Since most game downloads come from browsing (as opposed to searching or deep linking into) the store, we've put particular focus on games discovery, with a new games home page, special sections for premium and new games, immersive video trailers and screenshots, and the ability to try games instantly. We've also introduced new programs to help drive app downloads through richer discovery. For example, since launching our app pre-registration program in 2016, we've seen nearly 250 million app pre-registrations. Going forward, we'll be expanding on these programs and others like LiveOps cards to help developers engage more deeply with their audience.
Google Play now collects payments in 150 markets via credit card, direct carrier billing (DCB), Paypal, and gift cards. Direct carrier billing is now enabled across 167 carriers in 64 markets. In 2018, we have focused on expanding our footprint in Africa and Latam with launches in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Peru & Colombia. And users can now buy Google Play credit via gift cards or other means in more 800,000 retail locations around the world. This year, we also launched seller support in 18 new markets bringing the total markets with seller support to 98. Our subscription offering continues to improve with ML-powered fraud detection and even more control for subscribers and developers. Google Play's risk modeling automatically helps detect fraudulent transactions and purchase APIs help you better analyze your refund data to identify suspicious activity.
Google Play Protect and our other systems scan and analyze more than 50 billion apps a day to keep our ecosystem safe for users and developers. In fact, people who only download apps from Google Play are nine times less likely to download a potentially harmful app than those who download from other sources. We've made significant improvements in our ability to detect abuse—such as impersonation, inappropriate content, fraud, or malware—through new machine learning models and techniques. The result is that 99% of apps with abusive content are identified and rejected before anyone can install them. We're also continuing to run the Google Play Security Rewards Program through a collaboration with Hacker One to discover other vulnerabilities.
We are continually inspired by what developers build—check out #IMakeApps for incredible examples—and want every developer to have the tools needed to succeed. We can't wait to see what you do next!
Posted by Vineet Tanwar, Business Development Manager, Google Play
In June, we announced the Indie Games Accelerator, a new four month program to help indie game startups from India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia supercharge their growth on Android. We have been truly impressed by the overwhelming responses we have received, and the creativity that indie game developers from these regions have to offer.
We had a great time going through the applications and playing the games which were submitted for review. Now, it's finally time to announce the inaugural class of startups selected for the program who we will mentor and coach over the next few months. Here they are:
Congratulations to the selected participants and a huge thanks to everyone that applied! Find out more about the program or express your interest in joining next class of Indie Games Accelerator.
Join us in congratulating the latest apps and games entering the Android Excellence program on Google Play. This diverse group of apps and games is recognized for their high quality, great user experience, and strong technical performance. Whether you're interested in learning meditation or a new language, or are looking for a game about butterflies or warships, we're excited to dive in to these new collections.
Check out a few of our highlighted apps.
Test your skills with these highlighted games.
See the full list of Android Excellence apps and games.
Explore other great apps and games in the Editors' Choice section on Google Play and discover best practices to help you build quality apps and games.
Posted by Anuj Gulati, Developer Marketing Manager, Google Play and Sami Kizilbash, Developer Relations Program Manager, Google
Emerging markets now account for more than 40% of game installs on Google Play. Rapid smartphone adoption in these regions presents a new base of engaged gamers that are looking for high quality mobile gaming experiences. At Google Play, we are focused on helping local game developers from these markets achieve their full potential and make the most of this opportunity.
Indie Games Accelerator is a new initiative to support top indie game startups from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam who are looking to supercharge their growth on Android. This four month program is a special edition of Launchpad Accelerator, designed in close collaboration with Google Play, featuring a comprehensive gaming curriculum and mentorship from top mobile gaming experts.
Successful participants will be invited to attend two all-expense-paid gaming bootcamps at the Google Asia-Pacific office in Singapore, where they will receive personalized mentorship from Google teams and industry experts. Additional benefits include Google Cloud Platform credits, invites to exclusive Google and industry events, and more.
Visit the program website to find out more and apply now.
Posted by Larry Yang and Angela Ying, Product Managers, Google Play
Subscriptions on Google Play continue to see huge growth, with subscribers growing over 80% year over year. At I/O 2018, we announced several improvements we're making to the user experience to reduce barriers to subscription sign-up, and more tools to let you manage your business the way you want to.
While users derive a lot of value from their subscriptions, our research shows their fears of being "trapped" in a subscription without the ability to cancel or worry they'll lose track of how much they're spending create a hindrance to users signing up for your subscription apps. To address these fears, we recently launched a new subscriptions center, a one-stop shop for users to manage their subscriptions on Google Play.
Through the subscriptions center, users can:
In addition, if a user cancels a subscription, we will now trigger a cancellation survey to give developers feedback as to why the user is cancelling. Currently you can see the data from the cancellation survey by querying our server side API.
The new subscriptions center also has a "Get Started" link in the empty state that lets users discover subscription apps through curated and localized collections.
With the launch of the subscriptions center, we're also launching new deep links you can use to direct your users to manage their subscriptions from your app, over email or via the web. To implement, use the package name and SKU to construct the deep link, and then add the deep link as a button or link from anywhere in your app. View the Android Developers website for more information.
In addition to creating a better experience for users, we're also rolling out new tools that give you more flexibility in managing your business. One of the features we've heard requested most is price changes. Coming soon, you can easily ask users to accept a price change via the Google Play Console without having to set up a completely new SKU. Google Play will notify users of the change via emails, push notifications and in-app messaging, and if by renewal date the user hasn't agreed, we'll cancel their subscription. Sign up here if you are interested in participating in the early access program.
Other features we launched at I/O that help you better manage your subscription business include the ability to:
This is in addition to faster test renewals and flexible intro pricing we announced earlier this year.
To easily implement all of these, make sure you are using the Google Play Billing Library, which launched version 1.1 at I/O. The billing library is an abstraction layer on top of the AIDL file, and API updates are automatically picked up when you update your build dependency file the next time you compile your app. Price changes and upgrade/downgrade with the same expiration date are only available through the billing library. This will be the case for future launches as well.
We strongly believe that by building a great user experience, we build a high quality subscriber base. And by giving you tools and insights to better manage your business, you have the flexibility to do what is best for your business and your customers.
We have just wrapped up the second edition of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe! The iconic Saatchi Gallery in London welcomed 20 developers, from 12 countries, who showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, and journalists.
The finalists' games were on show to the public, who spent three hours trying out their games and voting for their favourites, alongside the Google Play team. The top 10 finalists were then selected, and went on to pitch their games, and compete for the big prizes in front of our jury.
Please join us in congratulating the winners! They will be bringing home a well-deserved diploma, along with a prize package that will help them reach more gamers worldwide; including premium placement on the Google Play Store, marketing campaigns of up to 100,000 EUR and influencer campaigns of up to 50,000 EUR, the latest Google hardware, tickets to Google I/O, and much more.
It's really inspiring to see the excitement around this second edition, and great to see the new wave of indie games coming from Europe. We are already looking forward to playing the games that will be developed in 2018!
Check out the main winners and the other finalists on the Google Play Store!
Bury me, my love
Playdius
France
A reality-inspired interactive fiction designed for mobile phones. It tells the story of Nour, a Syrian woman trying to reach Europe in hope of a better life.
Old Man's Journey
Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH
Austria
A story game about life's precious moments, broken dreams, and changed plans.
Yellow
Bart Bonte
Belgium
A puzzle game for you! A love letter to a marvelous colour and to the little wonder called touchscreens. Warning: very yellow!
Captain Tom Galactic Traveler
Picodongames
An open world platformer and space exploration game. Embark on an exploratory mission, discover planets, collect oxygen, play with gravity.
I Love Hue
Zut!
United Kingdom
A minimalist, ambient puzzle game influenced by mindfulness apps and abstract art. Players arrange shuffled mosaics of coloured tiles into perfectly ordered palettes.
Jodeo
Gamebra.in
Turkey
Jodeo is a 2D jelly critter. There's something it's curious about: what if 3D objects and 2D physics are in the same game? How can 2D objects interact with 3D objects?
Kami 2
State of Play
The calming yet addictive puzzle game is back! With over 100 handcrafted puzzles, it takes you on a mind-twisting journey that combines logic and problem-solving.
Kenshō
FIFTYTWO
Russia
A tile sliding puzzle with a wonderful soundtrack. Mysterious things happen in a ruined room. Doors inside that room lead to different worlds and beautiful landscapes.
No More Buttons
Tommy Søreide Kjær
Norway
A hand-drawn platformer where the buttons are part of the environment.
The Big Journey
Catfishbox
Ukraine
Designed for kids and adults alike, this a beautiful, casual adventure. Tilt to roll around and explore a beautiful world with Mr. Whiskers.
What happens to app usage and accessibility when people get new phones? The feedback we've had is that people want apps to work straight out of the box, just like on their old phones.
Developers of successful apps might also be used to thinking about user activation in a model borrowed straight from web. On the web, people register new accounts, activate by finding great features, then become retained when they experience value, and come back repeatedly to use your web page.
The story is much the same on mobile. People register to create new accounts, activate by using your great features, then become retained when they find value and repeatedly launch your app. However, there's one big difference. Android apps typically store more information compared to your average web session. You usually never have to re-enter your password for an Android app for years, post account creation, that is until the moment you get a new phone.
Getting a new phone can be a rare event for many people - some going years between upgrading devices. However, overall a large proportion of those who use your app will get a new phone every year. We have several tools to help you keep people logged in, engaged, and happy when they use your app on a new phone.
Auto Backup for apps should be configured for every application. This feature does exactly what it says - automatically backs up your app data. So when people get a new phone, their app data is automatically restored before your app launches.
To configure Auto Backup for your app you need to setup include/exclude rules:
AndroidManifest.xml
<application ... android:fullBackupContent="@xml/autobackup">
xml/autobackup.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <full-backup-content> <include domain="sharedpref" path="."/> <exclude domain="sharedpref" path="device.xml"/> </full-backup-content>
When configuring include/exclude rules it's important to avoid storing sensitive user data in Auto Backup, although it's a great place to store user specific settings and other app content!
To implement tracking for Auto Backup register a BackupAgent and listen for onQuotaExceeded(long, long) callback. If your app exceeds the 25MB backup limit, this callback will be your notification of failure. In a well configured app this will never happen, so you can track it as a crash report.
Learn more about Auto Backup for apps.
When we talk to people about the experiences they want on their new phones they're very clear; they want your app to remember who they are, and they don't want to re-enter a password. There are several ways you can accomplish this as a developer:
<TextView android:id="@+id/username" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:autofillHints="username" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/password" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:autofillHints="password" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/captcha" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:importantForAutofill="no" />
android:id="@+id/username" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:autofillHints="username" />
If you haven't already, try the Auto Backup for Android Codelab, and SmartLock Codelab.
Improving retention on Android for many people will involve trying to overcome the friction of device switches. With a rich toolbox at your disposal to transfer settings with Auto Backup, and to improve the login experience with Google Sign-In, Smart Lock for Passwords, Autofill, and Account Transfer API, you have the opportunity to deliver a great user story: your app works on people's new phones, just like it did on their old phones.
We're hosting another Google Developer Day at this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) on Monday, March 19th.
Join us for a full day, where we'll kick things off with a keynote to share our latest news for game developers, followed by three sessions focused on innovation & new platforms, pre-launch best practices, and strategies to improve performance post-launch. Each session will include mini-talks from different Google teams and developer partners sharing new tools, learnings and more.
We'll also have a booth in Moscone South, Wednesday (March 21) through Friday (March 23), offering three days of additional talks from many Google teams and a chance for you to ask the experts any of your questions. Stop by to hear talks, meet experts, and try out exciting demos. These events are part of the official Game Developers Conference and require a pass to attend.
Learn more about Google's activities throughout the week on our event site where you can sign up to stay informed. For those who can't make it in person, join the live stream starting at 10am PST on Monday, March 19th.
Back in October we launched the 2nd edition of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe, with the aim to identify, showcase and reward indie gaming talent from more than 30 countries. We were amazed by the innovation and creativity that indie developers from the region have to offer.
Selecting just 20 finalists has once again been a huge challenge. We had a lot of fun playing the games that will go on to showcase at the Saatchi Gallery on February 13th in London. Without further ado, we are happy to announce the Top 20 finalists of this year's edition. Congratulations to the finalists and thanks to everyone else who has entered the contest.
A Planet of Mine Tuesday Quest France
Bridge Constructor Portal ClockStone Softwareentwicklung GmbH Austria
Bury me, my Love Playdius France
Captain Tom Galactic Traveler Picodongames France
Core FURYJAM Russia
Flat Pack Nitrome United Kingdom
Fern Flower Macaque Poland
I Love Hue Zut! United Kingdom
Jodeo Gamebra.in Turkey
Kami 2 State of Play United Kingdom
Kenshō FIFTYTWO Russia
No More Buttons Tommy Søreide Kjær Norway
Old Man's Journey Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH Austria
Radium 2 | Ra² Developster Germany
The Big Journey Catfishbox Ukraine
The House of Da Vinci Blue Brain Games, s.r.o. Slovakia
The Office Quest 11Sheep Israel
Unbalance TVEE Turkey
Undervault Andriy Bychkovskyi Ukraine
yellow Bart Bonte Belgium
All the 20 finalists are getting:
They will also have the chance to win more prizes at the final event.
Anyone can now register to attend the final showcase event for free at the Saatchi Gallery in London on 13 February 2018. Come and play some great games and have fun with indie developers, industry experts, and the Google Play team.
Play Console
