Even after several releases, I still struggle to remember the process of publishing an app on the Google Play Store. After spending an entire day figuring it out, I've decided to summarize the essential steps here to keep a record and save time the next time around.
I’ll particularly focus on a part of the process that I find poorly documented: the electronic signing of the build. This signature is crucial for officially publishing the application (release in production).
The only effective answers I found were from a discussion on Stack Overflow... Unity3D stated it wasn’t their responsibility, while Google provided a general process specific to their tools (Android Studio) that was too broad.
I’ll first walk you through the entire process, then concentrate on the electronic signature part. First I suggest to watch this tutorial :
Glossary
- Google Play Store: The store accessible to end-users, where they can download and install your application on their phones.
- Google Play Console: The administration interface for developers.
- Signing Key: A secure file essential for signing your application.
- Keystore: The file containing the signing key for your application. The security of this file is crucial! The keystore can contain security keys for multiple applications (via aliases).
- Keystore Alias: The name associated with your signing key, which identifies the corresponding application.
Tutorial
Most of this process is covered in the previous video.
- Create a Google Developer account (25 euros, one-time fee).
- Create an application.
- (Install and) open Android Studio.
- Create an empty project.
- In the Build tab, select Generate Signed Bundle / APK.
- A window will open, offering you a choice between Android App Bundle and APK. Choose one and click Next.
- Define the keystore path by clicking Create New....
- Set the password for the keystore file.
- Set the alias name and the alias password.
- The information in the Certificate section is optional.
- Click OK.
- Exit Android Studio. A file with the .jks extension should be present at the location you specified. For now, we can cancel the process; we don’t need to use Android Studio anymore.
- You can close Android Studio.
Application Configuration
- Ensure that your application is configured to build on Android.
- Open the Project Settings > Player > Publishing Settings window.
- In the Project Keystore section, select the .jks file previously created with Android Studio using the Select > Browse option.
- Enter the keystore password.
- Choose the alias and enter the associated password.
- Make sure all essential options in the Project Settings for Android are correctly filled out (company name, build version, etc.).
- In the Build Settings:
- Enable the Build App Bundle (Google Play) option.
- Absolutely disable the Development Build option (I lost a day because of this, and it’s not mentioned anywhere! ╰（‵□′）╯).
You can now proceed to build your project (the first build can be very long).
Publishing on Google Play
- Go to the Google Play Console and create a closed test.
- Create a Release.
- Google will ask for your preference regarding the management of the signing key. Choose the first option: Let Google manage and protect your - app signing key (recommended), then save.
- Upload your build (APK or AAB), drag and drop is possible.
- After a few moments, if everything goes well, your build will be uploaded and appear in the list below.
I hope this tutorial will be helpful for your future releases. If you have any questions or additional tips, feel free to share them in the comments. Good luck with your projects!
This post is originally writed in french here.
Traducted with help from Chatgpt.
La bise, Tchouss!
o(^＠^)o
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