How to publish a self-hosted app on Google Play?

Question

Where to upload the definition file for a self hosted (managed) app in the Google Play console on a Google developer account?

I'm developing an app for a customer that uses an EMM (XenMobile) for managing their Android devices. We are using Android Enterprise (former Android for Work) to create a device owner managed profile on the devices and publish apps using the managed Play store together with XenMobile.

The customer wants to keep the APK within their own premises (and on their own COSU devices) and not host apps at Google. According to Google, this is possible - Google calls it Self hosted private apps and also has articles describing everything but the actual publishing process (https://support.google.com/googleplay/work/answer/6145182?hl=en&ref_topic=6145152).

I have the developer account and the json definition file created from the EMM, but when I try to upload the json instead of the apk file to publish the app, I'm prompted to upload the apk file instead. My question therefore is - Where am I supposed to upload the definition file?

BR Thomas

Answer 1

The owner of the developer account needs to be an admin of the enterprise in order to be able to publish a self-hosted app on Google Play. Therefore you will need to ask your customer to create a developer account using their admin account and upload the self-hosted app with this account.

Then here are the steps in the Google Play Console:

• create a new app,
• in "Pricing & distribution > Managed Google Play" select "Turn on advanced managed Google Play features",
• and then select "Privately target this app to a list of organizations"

The app should now be targeted to one organization:

After that:

• go to "App releases > Production track > Manage" and create a new release,
• select "I am uploading a configuration for an APK hosted outside of Google Play",
• upload your JSON file.

The interface should look like this:

Testing

If you want to test the app before sending it to your customer you can create a test organization using the Android Management Experience. Just make sure to use a different package name for the app since package names must be unique in Play.