What's new? Release an app to Google Play

In the Release section of the Play Console, you control how your new or updated app gets to people’s devices. This includes testing your app before release, setting the right device targeting, and managing and monitoring updates in the testing and production tracks in real-time. To help you manage these critical tasks, we’ve reworked the core user journeys to clarify and better meet your publishing needs.

What’s new?

• Newly grouped navigation that organizes related features based on tasks

• New Release overview page to monitor your app across across all tracks all in one place

• New app status definitions

• Separated internal, closed, and open testing tracks

• Pre-launch report is now co-located with user testing

• New production-only release management, including management of app availability by country/region.

• Redesigned the device catalog

• Centralized advanced settings, with easy app availability options and new release type definitions

• Timed publishing is now part of a new flow called Managed publishing, which allows you to review and control when changes are published.

You can try out the new Google Play Console at play.google.com/console

Releases overview

Monitor information about your app across testing and production tracks, and focus on important tasks that need actioning with the new Releases overview page. Here, you can quickly see how many users are testing your app, and view the countries where each of your tracks are live. With filters and search, you can control what releases or tracks you want information about, and select individual releases to dive into the details.

On the Releases overview, you’ll find:

• A summary of key attributes across all release types

• Highlights of key alerts that may need actioning, such as permission requirements, potential blockers of a launch, or rejected releases

• A full list of all releases across all tracks and form factors

• Active tracks across all form factors

Testing tracks

The Internal testing and Public sections of the Play Console give you options to check the quality and performance of your app with real users before you release it to a broader audience.

What’s new? We've made the distinction between your production track and your internal, closed, and open testing tracks much clearer. This reflects best practices and is intended to make it easier for your team to understand the status of app’s tracks at a glance so they can release with confidence.

Pre-launch report

While testing tracks let you test your app or game with users, the pre-launch report lets you systematically check the quality and performance of your app through automated tests on popular devices with a range of specifications in the Firebase Test Lab for Android.

What’s new? The pre-launch report now includes improved metric descriptions, stability issue clustering, ANR/crash differentiation and setting enhancements to highlighting custom tests (i.e. game loops and test scripts).

Production

Publishing an app or game is a big deal, and sometimes it can be scary. We’ve made a clearer distinction between testing releases and production releases with the new Launch section of the Play Console, where you can now create and manage production releases and make your app available to all users in your chosen countries. As an app release is taking place, the Production release dashboard gives you a holistic view of important statistics.

What’s new? We’ve added management of countries/regions where your app is available to the release management flow - as well as a confirmation action when changing availability.

Pre-registration

With pre-registration you can capture consumer demand from pre-launch marketing and activate it at launch. With pre-registration, your store listing is published before you launch so that users can register their interest and receive a notification to download your app when it’s available. Your app will be installed automatically on eligible devices.

What’s new? Configure rewards, country availability, and confirm supported devices all in one place.

Device catalog

The Device catalog includes thousands of Android and Chrome OS devices certified by Google, offering the ability to search and view device specs. The catalog also shows installs, ratings, and revenue contributed by each device type.

What’s new? We’ve redesigned the device catalog. View all the devices that your app is available on and those that you are excluding. Search and filter the entire catalog of Android devices and save your results to easily reference later. View detailed per-device information including CPU, RAM, form factor and system features.

Advanced settings

Manage the availability of your app on different Android devices and platforms, and turn on advanced settings like carrier targeting.

What’s new? Quickly unpublish or publish an existing app with App Availability. Manage the availability of your app on different Android devices and platforms.

Managed publishing

Timed Publishing has graduated to a new flow called Managed Publishing. You can use managed publishing to understand all the changes that have been submitted across Releases, Store Listings and more.

What’s new? See a summary of all your changes that are in review and control when they're actually published on Google Play. Review and coordinate all your changes in one place so everything is published at the same time.

Try out the new Google Play Console at play.google.com/console.