Gradle Play Publisher

Gradle Play Publisher (GPP) is Android's unofficial release automation Gradle Plugin. It can do anything from building, uploading, and then promoting your App Bundle or APK to publishing app listings and other metadata.

Project status: maintenance mode

Issues are ignored, but pull requests are not. If you need to get something done, submit a PR!

Table of contents

1. Quickstart guide
2. Prerequisites
   1. Initial Play Store upload
   2. Signing configuration
   3. Service Account
3. Basic setup
   1. Installation
   2. Authenticating Gradle Play Publisher
4. Task organization
5. Managing artifacts
   1. Common configuration
   2. Publishing an App Bundle
   3. Publishing APKs
   4. Uploading an Internal Sharing artifact
   5. Promoting artifacts
   6. Handling version conflicts
6. Managing Play Store metadata
   1. Quickstart
   2. Directory structure
   3. Publishing listings
   4. Publishing in-app products
   5. Publishing in-app subscriptions
7. Working with product flavors
   1. Disabling publishing
   2. Combining artifacts into a single release
   3. Using multiple Service Accounts
8. Advanced topics
   1. Using CLI options
   2. Using HTTPS proxies

Quickstart guide

1. Upload the first version of your APK or App Bundle using the Google Play Console
2. Create a Google Play Service Account
3. Sign your release builds with a valid signingConfig
4. Add and apply the plugin
5. Authenticate GPP

Prerequisites

Initial Play Store upload

The first APK or App Bundle needs to be uploaded via the Google Play Console because registering the app with the Play Store cannot be done using the Play Developer API. For all subsequent uploads and changes, GPP may be used.

Signing configuration

To successfully upload apps to the Play Store, they must be signed with your developer key. Make sure you have a valid signing configuration.

Service Account

To use GPP, you must create a service account with access to the Play Developer API:

1. If you don't already have one, create a GCP project for your app(s)
2. Enable the AndroidPublisher API for that GCP project
3. Create a service account and key
   1. Make sure you're in the GCP project you used above (check the project query param in the URL)
   2. Select New service account
   3. Give it a name and the Project Owner role (don't worry, we'll remove this later)
   4. After creating the service account, find it in the list of all service accounts and use the 3 dots menu to Manage keys
   5. From there, create a new key using the Add key menu (leave JSON selected)
4. Move the downloaded JSON credentials into your project and tell GPP about it
5. Give your service account permissions to publish apps on your behalf
   1. Click Invite new user
   2. Copy/paste the service account email (you can find it in the JSON credentials)
   3. Don't touch the roles
   4. Specify which apps the service account should have access to. In this example, GPP has full access to testing tracks and app listings, but will be unable to make production releases:

Basic setup

Installation

Apply the plugin to each individual com.android.application module where you want to use GPP through the plugins {} DSL:

plugins {
    id("com.android.application")
    id("com.github.triplet.play") version "4.1.1"
}

plugins {
    id 'com.android.application'
    id 'com.github.triplet.play' version '4.1.1'
}

Snapshot builds

If you're prepared to cut yourself on the bleeding edge of GPP development, snapshot builds are available from Sonatype's snapshots repository:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        // ...
        maven("https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots")
    }

    dependencies {
        // ...
        classpath("com.github.triplet.gradle:play-publisher:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT")
    }
}

buildscript {
    repositories {
        // ...
        maven { url 'https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots' }
    }

    dependencies {
        // ...
        classpath 'com.github.triplet.gradle:play-publisher:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT'
    }
}

Authenticating Gradle Play Publisher

After you've gone through the Service Account setup, you should have a JSON file with your private key. Add a play block alongside your android one with the file's location:

android { ... }

play {
    serviceAccountCredentials.set(file("your-key.json"))
}

Note: If you commit unencrypted Service Account keys to source, you run the risk of letting anyone access your Google Play account. To circumvent this issue, put the contents of your JSON file in the ANDROID_PUBLISHER_CREDENTIALS environment variable and don't specify the serviceAccountCredentials property.

Application Default Credentials

Alternatively, you can use Application Default Credentials (and optionally Service Account impersonation) instead of specifying a JSON private key file or environment variable:

android { ... }

play {
    useApplicationDefaultCredentials = true
    impersonateServiceAccount = "[email protected]" // Optional
}

Note: Currently, Service Account impersonation is only supported when using Application Default Credentials.

Task organization

GPP follows the Android Gradle Plugin's (AGP) naming convention: [action][Variant][Thing]. For example, publishPaidReleaseBundle will be generated if you have a paid product flavor.

Lifecycle tasks to publish multiple product flavors at once are also available. For example, publishBundle publishes all variants.

To find available tasks, run ./gradlew tasks --group publishing and use ./gradlew help --task [task] where task is someth