Publishing Your Android App to Play Store – XZIMG Augmented Vision Tutorial 7 of 7

Final Roll-out

Click App releases

Under Production track, click Edit Release

Release to production window appears, scroll down and click Review

Confirm roll-out to production window appears. Click start roll-out to production

A confirmation window will appear, click Confirm

That’s it!, we are done! Click on your app menu, it will show that our app is now Pending Publication. Once it is approved, it will be on the Play Store

That is the end of our tutorial series on how to publish app to Play Store.

Thank you for following my tutorial everybody!

Publishing Your Android App to Play Store – XZIMG Augmented Vision Tutorial 6 of 7

Filling Up Store Listing Information

The Store Listing window appears. Firstly fill in your app’s short description and long description

Next, scroll down the page. Add the icon and screenshot

Scroll down a little more, and add the Feature Graphic

Scroll down a little more, under Categorisation, select your Application type and Category. The selection depends on whether you are building an AR App for education, games or etc. Select the apropriate settings for your app

Adding Tags to your app to make search easier

Click on Manage Tags

The Tags window will appear. Search for the appropriate tags suitable for your app. In this example, my AR is an Entertainment. Press Add to add tag

Confirmation window appears, press Add

Once you have added the relevant tag or tags, press the back arrow to go back to Store Listing

Scroll down all the way down to Contact details, fill in your email. On privacy policy, fill in the url to your privacy policy. Then, click Save Draft

We are done with this part. A green checkbox will appear beside Store Listing

A green checkbox will also appear beside App releases

In the next tutorial we will do our final push to the finish line

Publishing Your Android App to Play Store – XZIMG Augmented Vision Tutorial 5 of 7

Filling in App Content settings

Click on App Content

App Content window appears. Click Start

The first question is Target Age. Select your Target Age Group and click Next

The next question is whether the app could unintentionally appeal to children. you may select Yes or No. If Yes a ‘Not designed for children’ label may be shown next to your app on Google Play. In this example, I chose No.

Select your answer and click Next

A summary will appear, read it and if it is correct, click Submit

Success. Now a green checkmark appears beside App Content

Publishing Your Android App to Play Store – XZIMG Augmented Vision Tutorial 3 of 7

Setting the Content Rating

Click Content Rating

The content rating window appears, click Continue

The content rating Questionaire appears. Firstly, lets fill in our email address and confirm it.

Next we will select our app category. Based on your app type, you will have to answer different set of questionaire. In this example, I will click Reference but yours maybe different.

You will be asked a lot of Yes and No questions, answer all of them and press Save Questionnaire

If there are no errors, the Calculate Rating button will become blue. Click Calculate Rating

Yeay! we now have generated the Content Ratings. Click Apply Rating

Our ratings are now applied. You will see a green checkmark at Content Rating. Next, we will set Pricing and Distribution

See you in the next tutorial

Publishing Your Android App to Play Store – XZIMG Augmented Vision Tutorial 2 of 7

Registering For A Google Play Developer Account

Note: You would need to pay a 25$ registration fee in the payment step

Go to https://play.google.com/apps/publish/signup/ and sign in with your Google Account. If you don’t have Google Account, you need to create a new one.

An Agreement Page appears. Agree with the agreement and click Continue To Payment

A payment window appears. Complete the details and press Buy

Finally, after the payment, fill in the Developer Profile form and click Complete Registration

You will then be able to access the Google Play Console. This means your registration is now complete. You would notice though that there will not any app registered unlike my account.

Publishing our app to Google Play Console

Click Create Application

A window appears. Fill in the title of your application and press Create

Uploading the App Bundle (.aab)

Click App Releases

For the purpose of simplicity we will skip beta testing and assume that our program is already the Production version of things. Wooooow. Under Production Track, click Manage

Click Create Release

You will be asked to let Google manage and protect your app signing key, press Continue

Click Browse Files

A file window opens, select our .aab and click Open

Once upload is done, the Android App Bundle will be shown together with its version code and size.

Scroll down to What’s new in this release? Then type a simple description of the changes you made to the app. Since this is the initial release, lets type in “This is the initial release of the application” and press Save

We are not done yet, don’t click Review. Next, we will set a Content Rating

See you in the next part of the tutorial

Publishing Your Android App to Play Store – XZIMG Augmented Vision Tutorial 1 of 7

Introduction

In the previous tutorial post, I have taught you how to publish a test app to Android. In this tutorial we will cover the topic that is a must for developer creating apps for Android, which is Publishing your Android App to Play Store.

  • This tutorial will be broken down to 7 parts. They are:
    • 1 : Getting your app ready and publishing it as Android App Bundle (.aab)
    • 2: Registering Google Play Console account and uploading the aab
    • 3: Setting the Content Rating
    • 4: Setting the Pricing and Distribution
    • 5: Setting App Content description
    • 6: Setting Store Listing
    • 7: Final Steps and Publish!

Prerequisite

You need a few things in order to put your app to the Play Store. If you are not a graphics guy, you would need to ask a friend with such knowledge to help with the graphics part.

  • A privacy policy for your app. You can get one from https://www.websitepolicies.com/. Websitepolicies.com will provide you a public link to your policy. This is what you will need later.
  • Graphics for Play Store
    • 2 Screenshot of your application (Don’t know how to screenshot? Learn Here)
      • JPEG or 24-bit PNG (no alpha)
      • Minimum dimension: 320 px
      • Maximum dimension: 3840 px
    • 1 High Resolution Icon for your apps
      • 32-bit PNG (with alpha)
      • Dimensions: 512 px by 512 px
      • Maximum file size: 1024 KB
    • 1 Feature Image
      • JPEG or 24-bit PNG (no alpha)
      • Dimensions: 1024px by 500px
  • Descriptions for your App
    • 1 Title (The name of your app)
    • 1 short description of your app (80 characters max)
    • 1 long description of your app
  • Note: All your descriptions must not contain:
    • User testimonials
    • Excessive details
      • OK : “This is an AR app on cats, for cat lovers”
      • Don’t: “this is an AR app on cats, brown cats, blue cats, silver cats, cat food , cat drinks, cats getting drunk in a bar and starting a fight, and many other cats”
    • Misleading references to other apps or products
    • Repetitive, excessive, irrelevant keywords, keyword spamming
  • Avoid including these:
    • Sexually suggestive images
    • Profanity and vulgarity
    • Graphic violence
    • Depictions of illegal drug use

Preparing for our App for deployment

Go to File > Build Settings > Player Settings

Change the App icon

Drag and drop your created app icon into Assets folder in Unity

Drag and Drop the icon to the Default Icon in the Project Settings

Creating a Keystore

Under Publishing Settings, Click Keystore Manager

In the Keystore Manager, Click the Keystore menu and select Create New > Anywhere

A save file window appears, save this keystore file somewhere safe.

Do not, i repeat do not lose this keystore file. Backup it multiple times! Without this keystore you will permanently unable to update your application. Both in Unity and in Play Store.

Next, we need to fill in the details as explained by the picture example below

Click Add Key

A keystore created confirmation window appears, click Yes

The key has now been set, under Project Key, click the Alias menu and select our newly created key value

Building our Google Play App Bundle

In the Build Settings window, select Build App Bundle (Google Play), then click Build

A save file window appears, select a folder to put the built file in. In my example, i put it in a new folder named AAB. Click Save

Once done, you will have an aab file in your folder

This is the end of Phase 1, in Phase 2, we will upload our app into the Play Store