Jumped through many hoops to try to public a watch face to Google Play Store.
I got an error about the .aab file needing a package beginning “android.” which I recall seeing mentioned in a post here. That post may or may not have told where to get the required package and how to make sure it gets used when making the .aab file.
Can someone direct me to this? My searches aren’t coming up with anything.
Meanwhile, Facer gave me no trouble at all. Published, loaded onto my test watch, done. Of course I did have to recreate my watch face using their tool, but luckily it was a simple watch face with only one complication.
OK, went and copied the text that’s coming up on the Google Play Console
Error
You need to upload an APK or Android App Bundle for this app.
1 message for version code 10000001
Error
This APK or bundle requires the Wear OS system feature android.hardware.type.watch. To publish this release on the current track, remove this artifact.
Not sure what the first error is about. I certainly uploaded a .aab file. I mean, how else could the second error me true?
I do not know about publishing . On WFS you can send the face straight to your watch from WFS . Is that what you want to do ? Many are having issues over publishing at the moment as you may see from the posts .
You are trying to publish in the wrong track. In the screen where you click to create a new version (on the right top) there is a menu where you can select the Wear OS track, like this:
I certainly I can do that. I’ve got a good dozen faces I’ve made an put on my Wear OS watches.
This particular one I want to share and I can’t expect everyone to know how to do this. Installing WFS and loading the .wfs file is easy. The rest is easy enough for me but I don’t want everyone else to have to do that.
Well, I did the Publish operation again. Changed the version of course ( 1.0 to 1.1 and whatever the other numbers is 10000…1 to 10000…2 ) uploaded the new .aab file to the project and I don’t believe I’m seeing any errors.
This time I get the message the the release status is available to internal testers. So far I have just my email on the tester list. No idea how this part is supposed to work.
When I did that upload the Wear OS option in the drop down was already selected, so that may or may not confirm my recollections that “yes, I did select that” who knows.
Anyway, thanks for the responses folks. It at least got me to try again.
I think it’s working. After a bit of waiting the URL the developer console gave me actually went to the play store and showed the watch face under it’s temporary name that they warn you about.
I uninstalled the watch face, told the Google Play Store to put it on my Galaxy Watch 7, and it put it in the list of watch faces in my Wear App and put it on the watch.
Anybody else want to try? I’d be happy to have at least one person who knows about this stuff try it out to see if I’m missing something. Like, how do I get more testers? Google wants a list of emails of testers but I certainly don’t expect anyone to post their email address here.
In case just the URL works without being linked to an email it’s here
[edit: broken auto-link to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watchfacestudio.pnp2&hl=en-US&ah=MJHAbfco2CUzPZwCMbNBokvJh-0 has been removed]
Thanks for contacting Google Play Developer Support.
Please be advised that developers with personal accounts created after November 15, 2023, will need to run a closed test for your app with a minimum of 20 testers who have been opted-in for at least the last 14 days continuously. When you meet these criteria, you can apply for production access on the Dashboard in Play Console so that you can ultimately distribute your app on Google Play.
This is because production is where you make your app available to billions of users on Google Play. Before you can apply to publish your app to production, you need to run a closed test.
To learn more about the app testing requirements, visit the Help Center.
Furthermore, kindly note that internal test releases are only intended for testing purposes. Internal test release will only be available for testers that are included in your app’s testers list.
I hope this helps. This case will be closed at this time. Should you require any further clarification or assistance regarding the Play Console in the future, please do not hesitate to reply to this email thread. I will be happy to address any inquiries you may have.
Everyone here hates google for their boring auto generated answer. You will know it soon or find other topics related to it why all of us hates google.
You’re doing some serious work with these so it makes sense for you. Not sure it’s worth the effort for a one off I wish to hand out for free to a small audience.
If you are already being required to complete testing before being allowed to publish, I do not think there is any way you will be able to bypass testing now. From what I’ve gathered, Google was more lenient with testing requirements in the past but for new personal accounts, testing first seems to be a hard requirement.
Additionally, just to warn anyone who’s not dealing with this yet, I think I came across documentation recently stating that even the old personal accounts are going to eventually have to start testing first.
The testing requirement certainly makes it harder on “the little guy” when it comes to trying to get started with watch faces even if you aren’t wanting to try and sell any of them. I think there’s room for hope though, because I have seen a few attempts at creating “testing groups” of WFS makers to help each other out, but I haven’t personally seen anything I could recommend as “safe,” yet.
It’s certainly frustrating to everyone who’s not doing anything wrong, but try not to be too upset with Google about all of this because I’m pretty sure it’s really just the “bad guys” out there that are making this have to happen for all of us. There’s been so much publicity in the last few years about all the malware hidden in apps on the Play Store that it seems they’re finally trying to crack down on the submission requirements and review processes to help clean that issue up.
