How to Publish an App on Google Play and App Store?

Let’s now have a look at how you can publish your app on Google Play or App Store. We’re happy to share some helpful advice and guide you through the whole process. Our article will also show you a lot of useful links to more detailed resources.

Basic Documentation for Google Play and App Store

Both these systems have their own documentation to make the uploading process smoother and to remind you of what you just can’t forget before publishing your app.

• Google Play
• App Store

Create Developer Account

Do you want to distribute your app on Google Play? You’ll have to create a Developer Account for a one-off fee of 25 USD.

If you want to publish your app on App Store, create an Apple Developer account with a yearly fee of 99 USD.

Are you one of our clients? Great, you don’t have to bother with creating a Developer Account yourself! We’ll take care of that and of the two steps below. Just don’t forget to fill in the metadata section.

Getting Your App Ready for Android

To launch your app on Android, you’ll have to generate and upload a signed version of the APK file (.apk). To sign your app, create a key in the .keystore or .jks format (or load an already generated key) and remember to store it somewhere safe for signing future versions of your app. The same key must be used for signing every time.

The size of the APK file that can be published on Google Play is limited to 100 MB. However, if you need to upload more data you can use APK expansion files whose size is limited to 2 GB.

Getting Your App Ready for iOS

The process for Apple is pretty much the same. This time you’ll have to generate an .ipa file from the builder. Uploading your app to App Store is not always easy. That’s why we’re happy to provide full documentation for languages Xamarin and NativeScript.

You can also do it our way and use the Xcode tool provided by Apple itself. It offers features to help you upload the app directly to App Store Connect and simply publish it.

Metadata

When publishing an app in App Store and Google Play, there are great volumes of data to be configured. Nothing too difficult for developers like you. That’s why we list only a few basic points to keep in mind while filling in this information.

Metadata list:

• Name
• Description
• Category
• Tags/keywords
• Privacy policy
• Country availability
• Bundle ID
• Icon
• Screenshots

Name: Name of your app for your users to find it (you can add a localised name for every language). The limit for Google Play is 50 characters, for App Store 30 characters.

Description: Obviously, it’s important to describe what the app does and pinpoint the most prominent features that will convince people to download it. Your description should be brief and to the point. Users can see more by clicking on it. This gives you a space of 4,000 extra characters.

Category: Your app must be in the right category to be spotted easily. Google Play and App Store need categories to offer your app to people looking for similar topics. Categories differ based on interests, such as: Business, Education, Food & Drinks, House & Home, Lifestyle etc.

Tags or keywords: For even more detailed specification of your app, add tags (up to 5 for Google Play) or keywords (for App Store) using less than 100 characters. Try to pick up the most relevant ones from the list (e.g. “Hair Care” instead of “Cosmetics”).

Privacy policy: The way you collect, use and share your users’ personal details as well as who has access to them should be as transparent as possible. We’re sure you have fine-tuned the privacy policy with your lawyers to perfection. Now it’s time to just upload the file.

Country availability: Consequently, it’s important to choose where you want to offer your app and possibly rule out certain states. Your selection is likely to depend on the languages your app has been translated into.

Bundle ID: Every app needs a unique identification code. You can easily find the app in the system by entering this code. Bundle ID is therefore similar to URL. Ours looks like this: cz.thinkeasy.<AppName>. Beware: It cannot be changed later!

Graphic Assets

Icon: This is your identity in the world of apps. Entrusting it to a professional graphic designer is always a good idea. Inappropriate or not relevant icons can lead to lower download rates.

Technical requirements: dimensions 1024 × 1024 px, format 32-bit PNG. The difference is that Android icons typically have transparent background, which means Google Play requires icons with the alpha channel (try Android Asset Studio).

Screenshots: Pictures are of great importance as well – either in the JPEG or 24-bit PNG format without alpha channel. They show your users what your app looks like from the inside. For games, we suggest uploading some videos, too.

With Google Play, you can add up to eight screenshots for each of the supported device types (mobile phone, 7-inch tablet, Android TV and Wear OS by Google).

For Apple, you’ll have to provide multiple versions of your screenshots that again correspond to displays of the supported devices (specified in inches, for details refer to Screenshots specification). You can either create them in a graphic editor or take the screenshots directly on an iPhone/iPad. If you want to embed your screenshot into graphics (such as onto the display of a tilted phone, see example), it is necessary to incorporate the screenshot into a specific phone model. Don’t have all devices ready at hand? Use the BrowserStack.

Publishing Your App

Finally, we’ve come to the best part! Just click “Submit to Review” and wait until your app is approved. This can take from a few days up to several weeks so do pay close attention when filling in all the details (the same goes for testing your app, but we’ll cover that later). It would be quite a pain to go through all this again after 14 days due to a minor mistake, wouldn’t it?