Android app not showing up in play store on some devices

Question

So I published my first app to the play store a few days ago.

It shows up here and when I search on the website shows up in the search result result Even says it is compatible with my phone on that page.

However when I search in the store on my phone it does not show up. Someone with a Galaxy S2 says it shows up and someone with a galaxy S3 says it doesn't. So mixed results there. Manifest.xml is here

I used mono-droid to build the app, is it possible that that has anything to do with it?

Grtz

Answer 1

check your manifest file contain support screens all screens value true like below code:

<supports-screens
        android:smallScreens="true"
        android:normalScreens="true"
        android:largeScreens="true"
        android:resizeable="true"
        />

Answer 2

I just had the same problem. My app would appear in the play store on my phone but when I searched via a tablet I couldn't see it. For me, the tactical answer was that I had not declared any explicity - I had simply added and hoped for the best. Turns out that the also implicitly adds a feature requirement for camera "autofocus" - which I don't care a lick about... and my tablet didn't support.

This required me to add an explicit "uses-feature" that turns off the camera requirement:

The more important thing is that the sdk comes with this command:

/sdk/build-tools/android-4.3/aapt

Which you call like this to get the play store's filtering rules on an .apk

./aapt dump badging [my.apk]

Then - you go to the app store on your offending device and install something like Android System Information and look at the "features" of the device. If your .apk asserts it wants something that isn't on the device's list - that's your problemo.

Answer 3

There are two permission that usually give us problems:

<uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera.autofocus"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CALL_PHONE" />

The first one uses a camera function that some tablets and smarthphones wont have. The second uses the phone function, which non-phone devices (tablets) won't have.

To solve this you must add this to your manifest:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CALL_PHONE" />
<uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.telephony" android:required="false" />
<uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera.autofocus" android:required="false" />

Uses-feature has a higher "permission level" them user-permission, so use use hardware.telephone but with required false, which means non-phone devices can install de app.

The same for camera.autofocus, its request, but it will not prevent the device from installing the app (required=false)

Just remember that if you start an call intent on a non-phone device it will crash, you must use a try catch for these functions.