Google recently announced multiple APK support in Android Market™, which allows you to upload multiple versions of an APK for a single product listing, instead of having to upload a single APK file for every version of your product. We got the lowdown from Anupam Nath, a Developer Support Engineer at Sony Ericsson, who explains in more detail about how this new feature can help solve some of your issues when publishing your app on Android Market™. See more after the jump.
Anupam Nath
Back at Google I/O, Google had announced plans to add several capabilities to help developers manage their products more effectively on Android Market™. In particular, a very helpful publishing option – multiple APK support – is now available. With multiple APK support, you can have different versions of an APK file under the same product listing. The APKs file versions are completely independent APKs that share the same product name, but contain code and resources targeted for your particular set of customers.
This feature also resolves some of the questions and comments we frequently get from developers, such as:
Can we use an SDK lower than 2.3 and still support Xperia™ PLAY (which runs on Android™ 2.3)?
We want to create high graphics textures for Xperia™ PLAY but other devices don’t support it and we don’t want to upload a separate application on Android Market™. What should we do?
The multiple APK support option helps you manage all the above tasks without uploading a separate application to Android Market™ with a different package name for Xperia™ PLAY, or other specific devices. Leverage this feature to support various devices (such as phones and tablets), Android platform versions, or screen sizes, all while keeping the application builds inside the same package and product name.
Setting up Multiple APKs
If you’re new to publishing on Android Market™, I’d recommended first going over the Preparing to Publish checklist and publishing on Android Market page on the Android Developers reference site to understand what you need to do if you plan to publish your application. Also review the publishing concepts for Android Developers. Here you’ll find a good explanation on key concepts regarding how the Android Market publisher site works, including descriptions on active APKs, simple mode versus advanced mode and the difference between “publish” and “save”. Most importantly, this page explains exactly how multiple APKs work.
Once you’ve made the decision to use multiple APKs on Android Market™, take the following facts into consideration:
You will have just one entry in Android Market™ for your application, and different devices might download a different APK.
You maintain one set of product details (app description, icons, screenshots, etc.). This also means you cannot charge different prices for different APKs.
All users see only one version of your application on Android Market™.
If you publish different APKs for different versions of Android, then when a user’s device receives a system update that qualifies them for a different APK you’ve published, Android Market™ automatically updates the user’s application to the appropriate APK.
Publishing multiple APKs
Assuming you’ve already prepared your application for publishing (including signing and versioning your application), you should be ready to publish on Android Market.
To activate multiple APK in the Developer console for Android Market, ensure you have the following settings:
1. In the Product details tab of Edit Application screen, an Upload new APK window opens when you first begin uploading your software. Click the Choose file button to navigate to and select the APK file.
2. When your APK file is uploaded, click the Save button.
3. Go to the APK files tab of the Edit Application screen.
4. Click Switch to advanced mode.
5. Click the Upload APK button and select the additional versions of the APK file to add. Select the Activate link to activate the APK.
6. When you are finished adding all the versions of your APK files for your application, click the Publish button to publish the APK files to Android Market™, or click the Save button to save your files.
The description circled below indicates which devices running a particular version of Android (in this case, API level 10 or 8-10) will be able to download this APK. The information shown in the description is automatically extracted from the manifest file.
Let us know…
We hope you take full advantage of the publishing options that the multiple APK support feature provides. If you have any questions, let us know through the Comments link at the end of this post.
