I wanted to publish it to the play store, get exposure and share what I have made. I paid the $25 fee, submitted my passport and bank statements for ID verification, and started the process to get my app published.
Well, what a terrible experience. It is not user friendly at all, and the requirement of 20 testers opting in to your closed testing for 14 days makes very little sense. I have spent the last few days messaging people, doing the test swaps, and generally wasting my time.
I have seen, from searching to find places that I can recruit testers, a number of 'services' where you can simply pay to have your app 'tested'. The whole thing has been really off-putting, what is the point..?
I wanted to make a flutter app next, something more detailed and complex.. but I am dreading having to go through this process of 'closed testing', after spending months making a project, essentially spamming forums and chat groups for testers. I paid for access to the store, I submitted my ID documents, this arbitrary barrier is so frustrating and again, really puts me off making a mobile app..
I know I am shouting into the void here, I suppose I just wanted to vent.
It's the end of an era for small developers. They can go submit their apps to F-Droid or Aptoide or whatever. That said, these alternative app stores need to be able to function properly on Android, without their apps being removed by Google Play Protect (which I think I've heard of happening).
It's hard to understate how little sense everything related to appstoreconnect and the dev account makes.
Since launch I've done a number of updates and the review process is always faster on iOS too.
But yeah, both stores need to be forcefully opened. They're sitting on their laurels inside their moats.
But I think the native app market in general has peaked. Most things can be done in a web app now.
It seems this only applies to personal accounts that were created recently (which would explain why I've not had any issues with recently created business accounts, nor my own personal account which is probably old enough to be in school)
A real way they could improve app quality is to improve the quality of the documentation, specifically the javadoc / references (guides are OK mostly) but that requires work from developers (since its literally embedded in the code). There are thousands of classes / methods that have no documentation whatsoever other than that they exist in the first place. No description. No tips. No mention of what happens if you pass null, or ... you get the point.
Of course, you can look at the implementation ... but that is free to change. The documentation is the contract, and at the moment its a very poor contract.
But this is about stemming the flow of shovelware into the store, (todolist tutorial no 800000, but I changed the name) where the problem isn’t that devs lack the tools, it’s that they simply have no serious intention of maintaining their product.
If you can’t find or don’t have enough belief in your own app to find 20 people to download it for free, is it fair to promote it in a way that my gran might come to rely on it.
It’s not nice to be exclusionary, but end users having to pick through that stuff just isn’t great for the platform. There might be a better place for hobby code.
Google already has a solution to this: Target API level requirements for Google Play apps
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
If you don't meet the requirements your app becomes unavailable to users.
> If you can’t find or don’t have enough belief in your own app to find 20 people to download it for free
I can guarantee you, many large companies, some whom I have worked for, and some apps you have likely used, do not have anywhere near 20 human QA / testers vetting their releases.
And if you look at the '20 tester' requirement closely, following it does not guarantee any outcome whatsoever.
> is it fair to promote it in a way that my gran might come to rely on it.
What your gran does is none of my business. If I have an idea which a few people may find useful, what your gran may or may not do with it should not impede my ability to release it.
Google already has strict guidelines about malicious apps, etc, which everyone must follow.
Isn't the whole review system supposed to promote good quality content?
This change, if genuinely implemented to try and improve app quality, actually only frustrates new developers that are trying to join the ecosystem.
20 people is quite a lot! After getting all my friends and family that use Android testing it, I still needed 10+ more 'testers'.
It's not clear what you mean exactly with "exposure". But if you only care about sharing your work, it may be better to publish it on f-droid.
As a professional AND dev, this sounds like there might be less devs, which means more work for me.
Don’t expect anything beautiful from a drowning ship.
It was like that famous bomber with bullet holes diagram, the part they were missing was the bugs were being reported, it was just only theirs were being taken seriously, and the rest were treated as annoyances*
Funnily enough, it actually made the culture exponentially worse because it layered on tons of process and paperwork, which gave more ammo to the actual problem, clique-y and unhealthy coddling of us vs. them behavior within the clique, which also drove a lot of people outside it to stop thinking they could help make things better, and if they did, it didn't/wouldn't matter anyway.
I always think of that whenever I shudder about this nonsense. Partly because the same leadership that was too nice & added testing + paperwork eyewash to fix a people problem, added testing + paperwork eyewash here.
When you have a hammer...
Also HN: WTF Google doesn't just allow anyone to put any garbage on the Play store, this is bullshit.
This 20 tester requirement also does very little to actually improve quality or stop 'garbage' from being listed.
b) NPM is a repo for open source. Garbage can be easily inspected. I have no issues with packages I am using. Decompiling APKs is not something I am keen to do
c) 20 testers won’t raise Play store quality. Scammers already have click farms or can purchase this for cheap. Better automated review tools and more importantly more humans in loop can help the quality. Maybe submitting code to 3rd party to get some “seal of approval” (not mandatory but boosting score?)
