Adding a new app on Google play

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This page explains the expectation of the release management team to create a new application on Google play.

Listing expectations

Release management takes care of the set up of the application on Google play. For this, the team needs several elements.

  • an APK, please note that the APK name org.mozilla.foo.bar will remain the same forever
  • Title (50 chars)
  • Short description (80 chars)
  • Full Description (4000 chars)
  • Graphic assets
    • Hi-res icon (512x512 png 32b)
    • Feature graphic (1024x500 jpg or png)
    • At least two screenshots. Min length for any side: 320px. Max length for any side: 3840px.
  • The application type/category (usually, Applications/productivity for us).

Note that for June 24 2019, the icon specifications are stricter: https://developer.android.com/google-play/resources/icon-design-specifications

Note that English is usually shorter than other languages. We should try to stay away from the limit.

Example of bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1508294

Content rating

You should be aware that Google play asks us to fill a content rating questionnaire. Release managers might get in touch with you about this aspect.

Distribution

If your application is targeting some specific regions (example: Firefox Lite in Indonesia), please state in your document with a list of countries.

Roll out mechanism

At date of writing, Google play offers various way to deploy the application.

4 tracks are available (content copied from Google play documentation).

  • Internal test: Create an internal test release to quickly distribute your app for internal testing and quality assurance checks.
  • Closed: Create a closed release to test pre-release versions of your app with a larger set of testers. Once you've tested with a smaller group of employees or trusted users, you can expand your test to an open release. On your App releases page, an Alpha track will be available as your initial closed test. If needed, you can also create and name additional closed tracks.
  • Open: Create an open release after you've tested a closed release. Your open release can include a wider range of users for testing, before your app goes live in production.
  • Production: When you create a production release, this version of your app is available to all users in the countries you've targeted.

For closed tests with alpha, list of users can be:

  • a flat list of Google account (android)
  • a Google group to which testers subscribe

Google group testing groups only available with Alpha (not internal test).

To these tracks, a roll out percentage can also be applied.

Translations

The l10n teams also maintains a translation platform to translate the title, short and full descriptions. The "What's new" section can also be managed through the platform.

This is managed on the store translation: https://l10n.mozilla-community.org/stores_l10n/ Translations are managed in Pontoon: https://pontoon.mozilla.org/projects/appstores/

Create a new issue on github for your project: https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/stores_l10n/issues/new

Please note that the screenshots are not managed through this interface. This is usually done by the marketing team.


Signature

The APK signatures are not managed by the release management team. The process is documented on the Application Services page: https://github.com/mozilla/application-services/blob/master/docs/howtos/signing-android-applications.md

Please note that keys cannot change. Upload will be rejected by the Google play interface.

Automation

Mozilla maintains a tool called mozapkpublisher to upload APK but also to update descriptions/what's new.