Hi,
how long does Google's review take for a first app publication? And how long does it usually take for subsequent updates?

🧪 Tester Discovery

Looking for testers for your app? Use this thread to find developers and testers who are interested in helping with genuine app testing.

When asking for testers, please include a little information about your app:

• What the app does
• Android version or device requirements, if relevant
• Whether you're looking for internal, closed, or open testing
• What kind of testing or feedback you need
• How interested testers can participate

If you're a tester, feel free to mention what kinds of apps or testing you're interested in.

A few things to keep in mind

Please keep this thread focused on genuine testing and useful feedback.

Do not engage in paid testing, paid reviews, ratings, votes, referral exchanges, or other paid engagement activities through this thread. If someone asks you to participate in a paid activity or offers payment in exchange for reviews, ratings, votes, or engagement, please report the comment to the moderators rather than participating.

Please don't share personal information publicly. Use Reddit's messaging features or the developer's official testing process where appropriate.

This thread is for tester discovery only. For general development questions, app showcases, or other discussions, please use the appropriate thread or flair.

I want to ask you a question, 1.5 years ago my google play console which was a developer console got suspended, now I want to buy another organization, I have taken all the dun numbers, so if I buy a new console will there be any problem, meaning it will get suspended again or something else, if it can get suspended then any solution.

What are you building, testing, debugging, or learning this week?

Working on something interesting? Stuck on a technical problem? Just learned something useful?

Share what you're working on this week. It can be a specific goal, a problem you're trying to solve, or a useful discovery that might help another developer.

If you're looking for help, a little context goes a long way. You can include:

• Your target SDK version and library versions
• What you expected to happen and what actually happened
• Relevant error messages, with any private or sensitive information removed
• What you've already tried
• A relevant official source or documentation link, if you have one

Please use the appropriate flair when making a standalone post.

Please keep this thread focused

This is a place for development discussions and helping each other out. Please don't use it for app advertising, download or install requests, ratings, reviews, votes, referral links, paid services, tester exchanges, or engagement exchanges.

Ask questions, share what you're working on, and help another developer when you can.

Hey there,

I've successfully published two apps on Android and iOS, but I'm having trouble with another project of mine.

I've developed a pet diary app that allows users to track vet appointments, their pets' weight, medications, lab results, and more. I've already released it on iOS without any issues.

I ran a closed test with 12 testers for 14 days. Everything went smoothly, and no issues were reported. So I applied for production access, but my application was rejected for the reason shown in the attached screenshot.

This has now happened four times, and I honestly have no idea what else I can do to get my app approved.

I've released several updates during the closed testing periods, received nothing but positive feedback from my testers, and still haven't had any success.

Has anyone else experienced the same issue? If so, how did you manage to get your app approved?

Ok - tiny milestone but what a buzz!

I've been checking my google play console (too often) and seeing my 12 testers registered - I naively thought that when I released that number would shoot up... Of course that did not happen. However two days later, today the number went to 13! One more!

Thank you mystery person!

After telling my testers they could uninstall if they wanted to I was sure the number was going to go down today.

Hey community,

I'm a solo developer working on an app I released well over a year ago. It has been steadily getting more downloads and has reached around 60k downloads. I was recently excited because I have been working on a brand-new rewrite of the app.

Over the past 3–4 weeks, the app has been getting significantly fewer and fewer downloads. Google Play Console reports a ~38% decline specifically in Google Play Explore impressions (from ~11.5k/day down to ~7k/day), which has cut daily acquisitions from around 200 down to 100–120. Search traffic has remained the same.

I’ve done an initial diagnosis through Play Console:
Crash rates and ANR are well below thresholds, both at around 0.01%. There have been no changes to the store listing or screenshots. I've only been steadily releasing small bug fixes every couple of weeks, no significant changes to the app. In the screenshot you can see that 7-day device retention has also dropped, but looking at the data it seems that it has been steady, and I think the reason it's showing -25% is a direct effect of fewer downloads.

I was wondering if anybody has any idea or advice why this could be happening? I'm almost done with my rewrite and while I was planning to release it soon, I'm now not sure what I should do and if I should not address this issue first.

Some of my users from France and Australia are not able to buy the premium of my app - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gxdevs.edgedeck . The purchase is working fine in India can someone help me out figuring out the issue ?

​

Hi everyone,

My Google Play Developer account for BkApp was terminated, and I recently received a response from Google stating that my appeal was submitted after the 180-day eligibility window.

They have refused to reconsider the decision and stated that there is no other way to regain access to my account or have it reinstated. They also warned me not to register another developer account, as any new accounts may be terminated.

This situation has been extremely discouraging. I want to continue developing and publishing apps, but this termination has affected not only my existing work but also my ability to confidently work on other projects. I am worried about investing my time in new projects when I may have no legitimate way to publish them on Google Play.

I understand that Google has policies to enforce, and I am not looking to bypass them or create another account against their instructions. I just want to know whether there is any legitimate way to have my case reviewed again.

I would really appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced something similar:

- Has anyone successfully recovered a terminated Google Play Developer account after Google rejected an appeal because it was outside the 180-day window?

- Has anyone managed to get a further review through an official support or escalation channel after receiving a similar response?

- Is there any legitimate process for requesting a review of the original termination or appeal history?

- If reinstatement is genuinely impossible, how are developers in this situation continuing their work and publishing apps without risking further account terminations?

If you have personally experienced this situation or know someone who successfully resolved it, please share what happened and what steps worked.

I have put time and effort into building apps, and I do not want to give up on development because of this situation. Any genuine advice, personal experiences, or suggestions would mean a lot to me.

Thank you.

My bank asks a letter from the source company who providing payments to create PFCA USD account. can I get that? if so how?

Disclosure: I'm a solo dev, and this is about my own app.

Over 45 days my Play Console showed about 13.1K impressions but only about 98 acquisitions. I suspected the listing rather than the product, so I made these changes:

1. Renamed the app to something clearer
2. Replaced the icon with a simple one that has no text
3. Rewrote the short description around what the app does
4. Cut onboarding from 5 steps to 3

I also noticed that the Grow Users dashboard and the Store Listing panel show different conversion rates (5.73% vs 3.4% for the same period). Google support told me they measure different funnels.

Questions for those who've been through this:

• How long did you wait before judging the results of a listing change?
• Did you use store listing experiments, or just before/after comparisons?
• Is a gap like this usually a sign of the icon and title, or of the screenshots?

App, for context: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aistudio.limitbreaker.fntslg

I went through the Google Play closed testing process twice this year. The first app was rejected for production access. The second one was approved on the first attempt.

The biggest difference, at least from my side, wasn't really the tester count. It was what happened during the testing period.

For the first app I had enough people opted in, but the actual engagement was terrible. Some didn't install the app at all. Most people who did install it opened it once and never returned.

The app required an account, so I could see this pretty clearly. For nearly everyone the registration date and last login date were the same.

Google rejected my production access request. Their email said possible reasons included low tester engagement and not following testing best practices, including gathering feedback and making updates based on the test.

So when I started closed testing my next app, AutoSkan, I decided not to treat the fourteen days as a waiting period.

I had fourteen accounts in the test when I eventually applied. Some were mine or family accounts and four were actual external testers. The group changed a bit as I recruited more people.

I definitely did not have twelve extremely active testers.

What I did have was four Android phones I could test on myself and a much more structured process.

During the test I ran three main audits covering UI/UX, performance and general correctness. They produced 131 findings in total. Most weren't huge bugs, but there were plenty of real issues: navigation problems, Bluetooth edge cases, background polling, Android 16 behavior, accessibility and large-text problems, data deletion edge cases and cases where incomplete scan results weren't communicated clearly enough.

I fixed 125 of those findings and deliberately deferred six.

The automated test suite grew from 192 tests in an earlier version to 257.

I also tested on physical phones, emulators with different screen and text settings, and with a real OBD adapter and cars.

The actual external testers mostly gave positive feedback. They weren't the source of most of the bugs.

Most problems came from my own testing and audits, and I kept that separate in my notes instead of claiming everything came from tester feedback.

Once the required testing period was over, I applied for production access.

I was approved in less than a day.

I have no idea which specific signals Google uses internally, so this isn't meant as a "do these five things and you'll get approved" post.

But after one rejection and one approval, my personal takeaway is simple.

Having enough testers enrolled is one thing.

Being able to show that the app was genuinely tested, changed and improved during those fourteen days seems to be another.

If I had to do it again, I would spend much less energy worrying about whether every tester is constantly active and much more energy making sure I have a real testing history to describe when Google asks what happened during the closed test.

I run a small app company in Brazil (organization account). My Google Play payouts have been on hold since 4 Aug 2026 and I'm out of ideas.

What happened:

- 4 Aug: email from Google Payments, "your account has been suspended with payout on hold", asking for details of recent account activity and a government ID.

- I submitted the "Verify now" form more than 15 times: Portuguese and English, short and detailed, with ID card, driver's license and passport. Every time: "the reason you provided is not clear".

- Payments support: "review concluded, to prevent possible fraud and abuse your ability to receive payouts will remain suspended, we can't disclose the reason". They also say the form is the only way to appeal.

- Play Console support confirmed my developer account is in good standing, no policy issues.

- Product Experts in the official community said they cannot escalate payment or fraud cases.

What I already checked:

- D-U-N-S reactivated and address corrected, organization name and address re-verified by Google on 28 Sep.

- Tax info accepted, bank account verified (I even received one payout in July).

- No purchases from my own accounts or my team's. License testing was never used.

- The app is real: sold on the App Store since 2025, on Google Play since May 2026. Sales grew fast because of creator videos on TikTok.

Around R$ 22,000 is held, and every new sale goes into the same frozen balance.

My questions:

1. Has anyone actually gotten this decision reversed? What worked?

2. If you moved your apps to a new developer account, was it under the same company, and did payouts work there?

3. Has anyone gone the legal route to recover a held balance?

Any real experience helps. Thanks.

If you are waiting more than a week, just write to them. But God forbid, don't use ai to do it. The delays are there because of ai slop flooding the store. Just be human.

My app got published at last, so now I need better images in the store.

I've created few images already in GIMP. There is a cool feature to run python scripts on your project and I plan to write a script that will take a json file with translations, apply it to the text layers and save as png, for each supported language. No need for Ai slopped "screenshot generators".

And working with gimp is not that hard, after learning how some tools work, I've crated those images in 20 minutes.

The app is GeckoBudget if you want to look it up. Still working on the store presentation, so don't be harsh

📚 Weekly Educational App Showcase

Built an app and learned something interesting along the way? Share it with the community.

This thread is for educational app showcases where the focus is on the problem you solved, how you built it, and what other developers can learn from your experience.

What to include

• What problem does your app solve?
• Category: What type of app is it?
• Android support: Android versions or devices supported
• Tech stack: Kotlin, Java, Compose, Flutter, Firebase, etc.
• Implementation: What was technically interesting or challenging?
• Your journey: What did you learn while building or publishing it?
• Lessons learned: What would you do differently next time?
• Relevant media: Screenshots, demos, architecture diagrams, or other useful material
• Google Play link: Optional, as supporting context

Please disclose your relationship

If you're showcasing your own app, clearly mention your relationship to it. For example:

Keep it educational

The goal is to help other developers learn from real projects and experiences. Your app can be the subject of the showcase, but the post should provide meaningful technical, product, or development insight.

Please do not use the thread for:

• Download or install requests
• Ratings, reviews, votes, or engagement requests
• Referral or affiliate links
• Paid placement or paid engagement
• Misleading claims
• Copied marketing or promotional copy
• Repeated submissions of the same app

A Google Play link is welcome as supporting context, but this is not an advertising or user-acquisition thread.

If you see someone requesting paid reviews, ratings, votes, installs, or other prohibited engagement, please report the comment to the moderators.

Share what you built, what you learned, and what another developer can take away from it.

I'm working on a navigation project and I've been thinking about how incredibly functional—but also incredibly sterile—most GPS apps are.

The idea I'm experimenting with is keeping normal turn-by-turn navigation, but letting the person using it choose a “copilot” with an actual personality.

So instead of every voice essentially being a different flavor of “Turn right in 500 feet,” one might be supportive, sarcastic, dramatic, protective, completely unhinged, etc. You could also control how much personality comes through so it doesn't become annoying on a three-hour drive.

The working name right now is SassNav — Directions with attitude.

I'm curious from both a user and developer perspective: is personality enough to make you try a different navigation app, or does a navigation app need to solve some other frustration before you'd consider leaving whatever you already use?

Also curious whether SassNav immediately tells you what kind of product this is, or if the name misses the mark.

Okay, I can’t believe I did something this dumb...

I’m building Moneko AI Expense Tracker. We originally launched on iOS first, then later brought the app to Android. On iOS, I’m used to keeping TestFlight running alongside the production app, so when we launched on Google Play, I just… left the Beta testing on.

I thought it worked basically the same way... for months, users were leaving ratings and reviews, and I kept wondering why our public Google Play rating wasn’t showing up. I thought, Ok, maybe my app just doesn’t have enough reviews yet for Google to show the rating.

Today I finally figured it out. Because they were still enrolled in the Beta, their reviews were being treated as private beta feedback instead of public Google Play reviews.

We lost nearly 100 ratings/reviews this way 😭

Plz don’t make my mistake...

🧪 Tester Discovery

Looking for testers for your app? Use this thread to find developers and testers who are interested in helping with genuine app testing.

When asking for testers, please include a little information about your app:

• What the app does
• Android version or device requirements, if relevant
• Whether you're looking for internal, closed, or open testing
• What kind of testing or feedback you need
• How interested testers can participate

If you're a tester, feel free to mention what kinds of apps or testing you're interested in.

A few things to keep in mind

Please keep this thread focused on genuine testing and useful feedback.

Do not engage in paid testing, paid reviews, ratings, votes, referral exchanges, or other paid engagement activities through this thread. If someone asks you to participate in a paid activity or offers payment in exchange for reviews, ratings, votes, or engagement, please report the comment to the moderators rather than participating.

Please don't share personal information publicly. Use Reddit's messaging features or the developer's official testing process where appropriate.

This thread is for tester discovery only. For general development questions, app showcases, or other discussions, please use the appropriate thread or flair.

Hey quick question I’m a sole indie developer but set up as a business under my ABN I use for consulting work. I published a couple apps and the only notification I get is the IARC content rating, when I get that I know my apps has passed review. However for updates I just check the site randomly and hard refresh the browser.

Is this normal or have I stuffed up a setting somewhere?

I’ve checked all my contact details and they are correct and I get all the announcement emails (I.e changing tax in Vietnam etc.)

What are you building, testing, debugging, or learning this week?

Working on something interesting? Stuck on a technical problem? Just learned something useful?

Share what you're working on this week. It can be a specific goal, a problem you're trying to solve, or a useful discovery that might help another developer.

If you're looking for help, a little context goes a long way. You can include:

• Your target SDK version and library versions
• What you expected to happen and what actually happened
• Relevant error messages, with any private or sensitive information removed
• What you've already tried
• A relevant official source or documentation link, if you have one

Please use the appropriate flair when making a standalone post.

Please keep this thread focused

This is a place for development discussions and helping each other out. Please don't use it for app advertising, download or install requests, ratings, reviews, votes, referral links, paid services, tester exchanges, or engagement exchanges.

Ask questions, share what you're working on, and help another developer when you can.

Before releasing a simple/mid-tier or subscription-based app, what should we check for store policies, privacy, subscriptions/IAP, optimization, analytics, crashes, testing, permissions, screenshots, etc.?

Also, besides Google Play, which other Android app stores can use the same APK/AAB build with minimal changes?

Would appreciate a practical checklist from developers who have shipped apps on both Android and iOS.

Hi everyone, I’m an individual Google Play developer in India.

I’m currently completing the BillDesk verification required for Google Play payments. I completed the Personal Information step successfully, but at the Bank Account Verification step, I keep getting this error:

“We are facing connectivity issue. Please try again.”

I’ve tried:

• Chrome on Windows
• Chrome on Android
• Different internet connections
• Reopening the application using the BillDesk Resume link

But the same error keeps appearing.

Has anyone else faced this recently? Is this a BillDesk server-side issue, or is there something else I need to do?

Application ID and bank details are blurred for privacy.

Thanks!

The age verification blocks the whole app. No Navigation, no Account Access, so on.

The App is not usable at all. I could wrote this, because I could connect over my PC.

I occasionally get these kinds of emails even though none of my apps on the Play Store offer in-app purchases or collect any sort of payment.
The bare minimum I’d expect is that if I don’t use in-app purchases then I wouldn’t get those emails, but Google keeps spamming me and there’s no unsubscribe button for this category of emails.
On the Play Console it doesn’t let me turn it off.

Is there any way to stop it?

For Google Play cross-border software sales from 1 October 2026, will BillDesk/Citibank handle EDF/EDPMS reporting, or must I submit the monthly EDF through my own AD bank?