Google Play Store

With every major OS release, Android has continued to iterate on privacy and security features. Google announced today that the Play Store is adding a “safety section” that all Android applications must fill out to “help people understand the data an app collects or shares.”

Google today announced new policies and guidelines for how Android apps can present themselves in the Play Store. This is meant to ensure that end users are not misled by app listings.

Over the past several years, Google has been working to make Android apps smaller in size by optimizing what code and resources are downloaded to devices. The latest initiative on this front is “App install optimization” in Google Play.

Alongside the launch of Android 12 DP3, Google today provided an overview of how the Play Store fought “bad” apps and developers in 2020. 

Google has unceremoniously revamped the dedicated Wear OS Play Store landing page giving more prominence to featured apps and watchfaces on the wearable platform.

Google told developers that it would deprecate the legacy method for installing Wear OS apps in March. Existing users of the Android-based wearable platform have yet to be impacted, but those setting up new watches or repairing are getting hit by this change.

In 2019, the Google Play Store received a Material Theme redesign that was followed by a dark mode. The next major revamp is here and sees new navigation, as well as revamped settings.

In August of last year, Google announced that it would allow more kinds of Android Auto apps on the Play Store. Developers can now publicly release new navigation, parking, and charging apps for Android Auto.

Google today announced a series of policy updates for apps distributed through the Play Store. The most impactful sees Google limit most developers from seeing which Android apps are installed on your device.

Google announced today that it will be reducing the commission it takes from Android developers that distribute paid applications and offer in-app purchases through the Play Store. The service fee on the first $1 million (USD) in revenue every year will be lowered from 30% to 15%.

For over a year now, Google has been hard at work on Nearby Sharing, a handy way to share things like files, contacts, and more with nearby Android devices — and Chrome. Today, the Google Play Store now offers the best example of Nearby Sharing, allowing you to share apps and updates between devices.

In the early days of Google’s wearable platform, smartwatch apps were bundled with their phone counterparts. Android Wear 2.0 moved to a standalone app model as part of introducing the on-device Play Store. Google now plans to deprecate that legacy approach to Wear OS apps next month.

As of last year, downloading certain apps from the Play Store on Chrome OS would automatically “install” the Progressive Web App. The latest service to follow this PWA approach is YouTube Music, though Google is taking a circuitous route with a separate Chromebook listing.