CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgoogle-play
Salil
Salil

Reputation: 536

Android application private publish on Google play

We have an application that has to be tested for "Rating feature" i.e user will click a button and will be redirected to the application's play store page to rate the application.

Is it possible to publish an application on Play Store but keep it private or provide access to only a few people. It should remain invisible for rest. After testing we may remove the application and then upload again at a later time.

If its not possible how can we test the rating feature.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 6347

Answers (3)

Siddharth Lele
Siddharth Lele

Reputation: 27748

The Google Play store does not have a feature / facility where you can upload an APK for private testing. You will have to rely on a third-party service for doing so.

The Beta Family is one such web service that allows you to do just that.

If you want to distribute the application to a specific list of people, they also offer a feature called Supersend

Their service is free. You can read their FAQ's to help you know more about it.

There is another well known web service called TestFlight. See which one works for you. I had good results with The Beta Family though and never ventured to try TestFlight. (As pointed out by LocalPCGuy in the comments, TestFlight does not support Android testing anymore).

And as already answered by Stew J on this same thread, The Google Play Store supports BETA and ALPHA testing.

Upvotes: 0

Stew J
Stew J

Reputation: 107

The Google Play Store now supports both alpha and beta testing.

Once you've created your app in the console, under the APK section, you can choose to upload alpha and beta versions that are not publicly available.

You control who can access the test versions using google+ communities - make these private so you control who can join them.

You have to publish your app to the store, before you can get the link to share with your testers for them to opt in to the testing program, but don't worry, provided you have no production apk uploaded, your app won't appear in the play store for users who aren't in the testing program.

Upvotes: 10

jcalfee314
jcalfee314

Reputation: 4830

It looks like you can use licensing to do this. Licensing is available for free apps too. You can assign a status like LICENSED or NOT_LICENSE using gmail addresses.

Upvotes: 0

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