How to publish an Android App on Google Play Store

Ever wanted to know what are the required steps to publish your Android mobile application in the Google Play Store?
By reading this tutorial you will find out what these steps are, how to prepare your app for publishing, how to sign up for a Google Publisher account, how to create your store listing and how to publish and update your Android App.

Requirements

Have an application ready to be published. [Importatnt]
You obviously can’t publish an app if you don’t have one.
To distribute an application through Google Play, a developer account must be created. This only needs to be performed once and does involve a one-time fee of $25 USD.
All applications need to be signed with a cryptographic key that expires after October 22, 2033.
The maximum size for an APK published on Google Play is 100MB. If an application exceeds that size, Google Play will allow extra assets to be delivered through APK Expansion Files. Android Expansion files permit the APK to have 2 additional files, each of them up to 2GB in size. Google Play will host and distribute these files at no cost. Expansion files will be discussed in another section.
Google Play is not globally available. Some locations may not be supported for the distribution of applications.
Both Android Studio and Eclipse IDE will be used.

Becoming a Publisher

In order to publish applications on Google play, it is necessary to have a publisher account. To sign up for a publisher account follow these steps:

  1. Visit the Google Play Developer Console.
  2. Enter basic information about your developer identity.
  3. Read and accept the Developer Distribution Agreement for your locale.
  4. Pay the $25 USD registration fee.
  5. Confirm verification by e-mail.
  6. After the account has been created, it is possible to publish applications using Google Play.

Preparing Promotional Assets

In order to effectively promote and advertise an application on Google Play, Google allows developers to submit promotional assets such as screenshots, graphics, and video to be submitted. Google Play will then use those assets to advertise and promote the application.

Publishing to Google Play

First, open your Android Studio.
Now open your Android app project that you want to upload on Google play store.
Click on the ‘Build’ from toolbar option and select ‘Generate Signed APK
Next, enter your keystore details. Here, you’ll have two options.

  • Create New Keystore
  • Choose Existing Keystore

If you’ve already created a keystore file, select that keystore file path and enter the keystore password, key alias, and key password information.
And, if you haven’t created a keystore file, then click on create new button.

Process For Creating New Keystore

Once you click on Create new button, it will ask you to define Keystore path and enter following mandatory information.

  • Password and Confirm Password
  • Key Alias Name
  • Key Password and Confirm Password
  • First Name and Last Name of your Android app certificate. (certificate name can be your App name or your organization name.)

Generate Signed APK

Once you’ve successfully created your Keystore, click on Generate Signed APK. it will ask you to define destination folder of APK. And, while uploading your Android app, remember to select ‘Release Build Type’.
After finishing all process, you’ll get a notification as APK Generated Successfully on the top-right corner of Android Studio.

Google Developer Console

Next, open your web browser and go to Google Play Developer Console from following link – https://play.google.com/apps/publish/.
Login to your Google developer account.
If you don’t have a developer account, click on Sign Up button in the right corner and follow the general steps for creating a new Google account.
Although, you’ll need to pay $25 one-time fee for creating a developer account.
Once you pay the fee and create your Google developer account, login to developer console with the same account.
Here, click on ‘Create New Application’ located at the top right corner of your screen.

Create New Application

In the pop-up screen, enter the name of your application. You can enter name up to 30 characters for your Android application title.
Next, add a description for your Android application. You can enter app description up to 4000 characters in the description field.
Now upload the graphic assets. Here, you’ll be asked to upload different images for your application.

  • Screenshots (minimum 2 screenshots are required. Maximum 8 screenshots).
  • High resolution icon (512 x 512 32-bit PNG (with alpha))
  • Feature Graphic (1024 x 500 h JPG or 24-bit PNG (no alpha))

After uploading graphic, select your application category.

  • Application
  • Games

In the next drop down list, select respective category for your Android application.
Next, add privacy policy URL if you’re collecting personal and sensitive information.
Now go to Price & Distribution tab, and choose whether you’re uploading your Android app as free or paid. Also, you can select in which countries your app should be distributed.
Once you add details for price & distribution, you’ll have to define whether your app contains ads or not. Click on Yes if it’ll have ads.
Next, upload your Android application. Click on ‘Upload your first APK to Production’ button.
Here, you’ll be asked to upload your APK file. Click on Browse files and select your APK file.
For Content Rating, go to its tab. Select your app category. Then you’ll be asked to fill one form. Save this questionnaire after filling and click on Calculate rating.
Finally, once you’ve completed all these steps, you’ll see ‘Ready to Publish’ text written on the top-left corner of your screen. Now, just hit the publish button and your Android app will be published.
So, upon finishing, you’ll the idea about how easy it is to publish Android app on Google play store, and it can be done in just few minutes.
Now, all you need is your marketing strategy that help you rise above thousands of your competitors. And, if you’ve creating any Android app, but have an idea in mind, you could either learn how to develop Android app or hire Android app developer who will help you build Android app according to your requirements.

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