alt Hacker NewsThere's a bit more steps than that for someone who hasn't yet launched a Play Store app. When I launched a hobby app I had to find and maintain 20 unique testers (they have since reduced it to 12, I think? it was 20 back in 2024) willing to test the app for 2 weeks before Google let me list it on the Play Store.
Though even this wasn't that hard... I easily found more volunteer testers than I needed on a relevant subreddit (the app is a PvP stat tracking app for a videogame, and I found plenty of people willing to sign up to test my app on a subreddit dedicated to that videogame).
That said, because of the unique testers requirement it was a much bigger pain in the ass to get listed on the Play Store than the Apple App Store (my app is written with kotlin multiplatform and supports Android/iOS/Windows/WASM).
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Wow it changed a lot since the last time I did it. I wonder it if has to do with the type of app or permissions it requests. Back then(10 years ago so way back then), payment was all that was required. You had to wait for some automated reviews and tests and potentially a manual one which could flag issues depending on the permissions you request but it was straight forward. Apple, on the other hand, always had a manual review and was quite strict in what they would accept.
This is actually a pretty big hurdle for me. I don't use social media and the I have tried to post on Reddit but it's impossible to post with new account filter these days.
That's the exact approach I want to take though, kotlin multiplatform.
I'm a new Android developer, it does require the 14 beta testers, at least as of last week when I tried to get it published. So far I've printed flyers and asked friends, but I'm definitely struggling to get enough testers. Almost everyone I know has iPhones and the few people with Android (apart from myself) don't collect Orchids so my app doesn't have relevance to them.
Apple was much easier, pay $99 and 1 week later it was published.