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androidgoogle-playpublishchannel

Cannot restrict the distribution of my Android app

I have a problem which is quite similar to this post: Google Play Private Channel "Restrict Distribution" option missing. Both the question and the answers in that post did not help me out.

The option to restrict the distribution is also missing for me. I've made myself a checklist of the things I did and I can not figure it out why it is still not showing up. I made sure that the following things were done:

  • The company has a Google Apps for Business with a verified domain.
  • The Google Play Developer Console service is turned on and available for everyone.
  • "Allow users to update Google Play Private Channel" and "Allow users to access Google Play Private Channel" are both checked.
  • The developer account (Which is an @gmail.com account) has been invited as a user to the Google Apps domain of the company.
  • Just to be sure I also added someone from the domain as a user to the developer account.
  • The developer account has all the rights he needs on the Google Apps and the user in the developer account has all the rights he needs.
  • Waited for more than 24 hours, as things could take up that amount of time to get taken care off.

It doesn't matter if I upload an APK to the Google Developer Console with the developer account or with the user from the domain. The option to restrict the distribution is not visible on either of them.

If some one could help me out with this problem, then I would really appreciate it. Just mention it if I need to clarify some stuff a bit better. I'll edit my post then.

Solution

  • Got my answer after contacting the Google Play Developer Support (Got their response faster than I expected). It seems that the primary e-mail of the developer account must be in the same domain as the Google Apps.

    A quote from the response that I got from the Google Play Developer Support:

    In order for the option to be available to restrict distribution to your domain, the primary email of the developer account must be part of that domain.

    So adding a domain user as a user to the developer account will not work.

    You might ask yourself the question "But how do I change my primary e-mail?". The answer to that question is that you can't. You need to make a new developer account, transfer your apps from the old one to the new one and after that (Although it is optional) request a cancellation and refund of the old account. More information about this can be found here: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/139626?hl=en