The event everyone was waiting for this month, Google I/O, had made quite some waves this week when the company updated the public and the developers on all the new tech, hardware, and software that is in the works or even ready to be launched.
Some of the highlights were Android Q Beta 3, the Google AI assistant and abilities, the new line of Pixel 3 a smartphones, new features for Google search and existing apps such as Maps or the Google Play Store.
Today we’ll take a look at some of the new tools and improvements for Google Play Store that were revealed at Google I/O 2019.
Android App Bundle – New Features
The Android App Bundle which was introduced last year has received new features, and the most relevant one is called dynamic features. As described on the Android Developers Blog, Dynamic Features offer three options:
- On-demand delivery — install features when they’re needed or in the background, instead of delivering them at install time, and reduce the size of your app.
- Conditional delivery — control which parts of your app to deliver at the time of install based on the user’s country, device features, or minimum SDK version.
- Instant experiences — now fully supported, so you only need to upload one artifact for your installed app and Google Play Instant experiences.
These options are very important to users as well, giving them the ability to get a smaller app file size, and allowing the download the update in the background, while the user is enjoying the app.
Updating Will Be Different – Immediate/Flexible Flow
Updating gets easier, now coming in two modes thanks to a new in-app updates API, which supports two flows:
- The “immediate” flow is a full-screen user experience that guides the user from download to update before they can use your app.
- The “flexible flow” allows users to download the update while continuing to use your app.
Other Improvements: Testing, Google Play Console Data, User Review System, and Custom listings
Testing also received an upgrade, and devs can share test builds quickly, through a URL. Fixing bugs will be much easier now that you can catch them faster.
Google Play Console data gets new metrics, and other insight to help developers learn about the app’s performance: core metrics refresh, app size metrics and reports, developer-selected peer benchmarks, market insights with curated peersets.
The user review system also got a makeover that we will all see in August. Check out the new feature for developers that helps them with suggested replies based on the user’s review content:
Custom listings also got an upgrade, allowing developers to create custom listing by install state which will let them to create marketing messages for certain types of users.
Check out all the details about the Google Play Store upgrades and new features on the Android Developers Blog.
Agnes is a technical writer, being in touch with reports to come up with the latest tech leaks.
