Publish Multiple APKs to Google Play Store

Question

I was studying Android Developer doc today and found a new topic Multiple APK Support which says that:

Multiple APK support is a feature on Google Play that allows you to publish different APKs for your application that are each targeted to different device configurations.

I am unable to find this feature on Google Play Developer Console, can someone guide me over this feature?

Solution 1

Later in the documentation you link, it has a "how it works" section which explains you have to enable Advanced Mode to be able to use the feature:

To publish multiple APKs for the same application, you must enable Advanced mode in your application's APK files tab (as discussed in the previous section). Once in advanced mode, you can upload, activate, then publish multiple APKs for the same application. The following sections describe more about how it works

NOTE The above answer is deprecated. Please refer to the Feb 1 2018 answer by Dhaval Jivani below.

Solution 2

Update :

In Google I/O 2018, a new publishing format has been introduced for Android applications called Android App Bundle. It is a new upload format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, but defers APK generation and signing to Google Play

Read More from below links :

https://medium.com/mindorks/android-app-bundle-6c65ce8105a1 https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle

@Paul In new UI on play store developer console APK tab has been removed. And its being replaced by Apk Release So Advanced Mode is removed in new UI on google play store

You must know some rules before upload multiple APKS to play store :

1. All APKs you publish for the same application must have the same package name and be signed with the same certificate key.
2. Each APK must have a different version code, specified by the android:versionCode attribute.
3. Each APK must not exactly match the configuration support of another APK.

for more information please Read

You can also see How to create multiple apk files for android application

All you have to do is upload each version one at a time. Each next version will need to be higher than the previous and it will ask you if you would like to deactivate any of your previous versions or retain them, and you will want to retain them so that they stay available. Please note, users will always receive the highest version available to them though so if they are compatible with multiple versions then they will not be given the choice of which version they want, they will just automatically receive the highest version

Comments

[user924]

there is nothing about "Advanced Mode"

[gabhor]

@user924 this answer is deprecated since Play Store developer console was changed. Please check Dhaval's answer here: stackoverflow.com/a/48556005/5863563

[Paul]

I agree, @SoftKaka please change the answer fro me to Dhaval.

[Jagadish]

If all apks have different version codes then what is the actual one...by this I mean I am using firebase dynamic links in which I want to specify min app version in the console but which one should I because play console gives different 4 digit version code for each apk file.