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androidandroid-studiogoogle-play-console

Google Play Store publishing without 'Play App Signing'

I may be having a senior moment, but I'm pretty sure something has changed since I last published a new app on Google Play.

I am building the new app in Android Studio as I have always done. As I have kept AS up to date I am now using Koala which has some obvious changes, but I am now wondering if something has changed in terms of creating APKs and the associated signing.

I can sign my app no problem and it build and runs on the emulator and on a couple of my test devices.

I am now ready to publish to Google Play for internal testing.

I publish APKs (rather than app bundles) out of choice as I prefer t manage my own keys rather than using 'Play App Signing'.

Now, when I try to upload the APK to a new Internal Testing release on the Google Play Console, there is a message saying I have to ' provide a signing key or generate one using Play app signing'.

I don't remember having to do this before, but it is quite a while since I have published a new app. (Though I have been publishing updates to my existing apps throughout).

It looks like I may have to create a .pem key from my existing .jks keystore files... or am I misunderstanding something?

Hunting around the Google Developer pages it talks about using keytool which I do not have on my machine - I have searched the bin folders in the JRE bundled with AS but cannot find it.

I am at a loss.

Searching the open web everything I can find points to using Google App Signing.

(I know there are arguments for using Google App Signing, but I want to know how to publish my app with my own control f the signing keys as I always have done. At least for now.)

What am I missing?

It looks like it should still be possible to sign without using Google App Signing - see the below screenshots from the Google Play Developer Console:

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I know that Google App Signing is mandatory for App Bundle distribution, but I thought it was optional for APK distribution.

Solution

  • Finally found it...

    https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/preparing#:~:text=For%20Google%20Play%20Store%2C%20all%20apps%20created,are%20required%20to%20use%20Play%20App%20Signing.

    So, as of August 2021 all new apps distributed on the Google Play Store must use Google App Signing.

    Oh well, that's that, then.