Although overshadowed by AI news this year, Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference also focuses on what’s new for those building for Android. This year, it’s Google Play that’s getting the spotlight, with a new discoverability for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other improvements to developer-facing tools like the Google Play SDK Console and Play Integrity API, among other things.
Of particular interest to developers is something called the Engage SDK, which will introduce a way for app makers to display their content to users in a full-screen, immersive experience personalized to each user. However, Google says this isn’t a surface that users can see right now.
Instead, the Engage SDK is offered as a developer preview so developers can leverage the upcoming surface to highlight the most important content from users’ installed apps, personalized recommendations, and promotions. If the user has already installed the app, they can highlight the most important content from these apps. If the user hasn’t installed the app, developers can use this space to showcase their app’s most exciting features. It may also offer personalized offers and promotions.
Developers will need to integrate with the Engage SDK — which takes about a week to complete — to take advantage of this new feature. Currently, the Engage SDK is offered as preview by invitation only.
Play Points, the reward program of the Play ecosystem, is used to release coupons, discounts and exclusive items in-game. Now it’s also easier to track these offers through the Play Consoleso developers can better optimize their campaigns.
Google also made it easy to integrate Play game services and expanded the Google Play Games on PC program to more than 140 markets. The program’s catalog now includes more than 3,000 titles, the company noted.
For SDK developers, Google is opening its own Console SDK to all SDK builders, as long as they are distributed from a regular Maven repository source that can be verified by Google. The SDK Console, which was first released in 2021, aims to help SDK developers improve their performance by offering tools such as bug reporting, insights, and the ability to communicate more directly with developers. With the extension, it will now also be open to previously unsupported smaller and open source SDKs. This will allow a wider range of SDK makers to provide developers with tools to update to SDK versions that fix bugs and issues and comply with the latest Play Store guidelines.
Developers can also share bug reports and ANR (Application Not Responding) errors with SDK owners to help them improve.
The Play Integrity API, released in 2022, is also being updated. The API helps developers ensure that user actions and server requests come from an unmodified version of their application as a means of protecting against risk and fraud. Now it will add three new features. One is the public beta of “app access risk,” which lets an app know if another app is recording the screen, showing overlays, or controlling the device. (However, it won’t be triggered by features used for accessibility.) The API can also now respond with a Play Protect verdict, which lets developers know if Play Protect is enabled or if it has found any known malware on device. Another feature, “recent device activity,” will allow developers to identify devices making a high volume of requests, which could be a sign of automated traffic or an attack, Google says.
To help developers acquire and engage users, the Play Store releases custom store listings, which allow developers to change their listings and optimize them for different audiences. They can also now create lists based on keywords that users are searching for and the Play Console will make keyword suggestions. Google’s Gemini AI can also be used help write app descriptions;
Following other changes to make the Play Store more useful to people with different form factors, such as tablets or watches, listings can now display screenshots, ratings and reviews specific to each form factor. This will also help when users filter apps by device type or explore the page dedicated to apps for “other devices”.
Developers who use deep links to their app — or links that point to a specific page within their app — can now update those links without submitting an app update for review. Instead, they will be able to use the deep link repair feature in the Play Console to experiment with different links and then push them live.
The company also brought up various changes made to Play Store commerce, including support for UPI in India, Pix in Brazil, the ability for parents to approve purchases for children under a Google Family setting and, in India, the ability to ask a family member or friend outside of your family group to purchase an app or in-app product. The latter is handled by sharing a payment link via text message or email.
Google noted that it automatically updates prices in the Play Store to reflect currency fluctuations against the US dollar and now allows developers to price products up to US$999.99 (or the local equivalent). Developers can also use a new Play the Billing Lab app to test features to improve the customer experience of one-time purchases and subscriptions;
The installment subscription feature, which has early access to select markets, allows customers the ability to pay over time for long-term subscriptions. So far, the program has seen an 8% increase in total subscription signups and a 4% increase in user spending, but Google hasn’t said when it will roll out more widely.
To take advantage of the features, developers should upgrade to Play Billing Library 7.0 later this month, Google said.
