This is one of the shortest chapters and there is absolutely nothing technical in it at all. However, it does take a while to complete. In this chapter, we will prepare all the required resources before we can upload our app, as well as export the publishable APK file.
This chapter will cover the following topics:
- Preparing to publish
- Building the publishable APK file
- Publishing the app
- The basics of promoting the app
You probably don't want to upload any of the apps from this book, so the first step is to develop an app that you want to publish.
Head over to https://play.google.com/apps/publish/ and follow the instructions to get a Google Play developer account. This was $25 at the time of writing and is a one-time charge with no limit on the number of apps you can publish.
Exactly how to design an icon is beyond the remit of this book. But, simply put, you need to create a nice image for each of the Android screen density categorizations.
This is easier than it sounds. Design one nice app icon in your favorite drawing program and save it as a .png file. Then, visit http://romannurik.github.io/AndroidAssetStudio/icons-launcher.html. This will turn your single icon into a complete set of icons for every single screen density.
There are many sites that offer a similar free service. Once you have downloaded your .zip file from the preceding site, you can simply copy the res folder from the download into the main folder within the project explorer. All icons at all densities have now been updated.
When we log into Google Play to create a new listing in the store, there is nothing technical to handle, but we do need to prepare quite a few images that we will need to upload.
Prepare upto 8 screenshots for each device type (a phone/tablet/TV/watch) that your app is compatible with. Don't crop or pad these images.
Create a 512 x 512 pixel image that will be used to show off your app icon on the Google Play store. You can prepare your own icon, or the process of creating app icons that we just discussed will have already autogenerated icons for you.
You also need to create three banner graphics, which are as follows:
- 1024 x 500
- 180 x 120
- 320 x 180
These can be screenshots, but it is usually worth taking a little time to create something a bit more special. If you are not artistically minded, you can place a screenshot inside some quite cool device art and then simply add a background image. You can generate some device art at https://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/promote/device-art.html.
Then, just add the title or feature of your app to the background. The following banner was created with no skill at all, just with a pretty background purchased for $10 and the device art tool I just mentioned:
Also, consider creating a video of your app. Recording video of your Android device is nearly impossible unless your device is rooted. I cannot recommend you to root your device; however, there is a tool called ARC (App Runtime for Chrome) that enables you to run APK files on your desktop. There is no debugging output, but it can run a demanding app a lot more smoothly than the emulator. It will then be quite simple to use a free, open source desktop capture program such as OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) to record your app running within ARC. You can learn more about ARC at https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc and about OBS at https://obsproject.com/.