Android on Aamnah - Frontend Web Developer

Adding Google Play Store to an Android Emulator device on macOS

Thu, 26 May 2022 12:33:34 +0500

This is something that turned out to be fairly simple to do and took less than five minutes.

Turn off the emulator device
The Emulator device settings are in ~/.android/avd/EMULATOR_DEVICE_NAME.avd/config.ini. (You can also find the emulator device’s config folder by clicking options dropdown and selecting Show on Disk)

Set PlayStore.enabled to true and change google_apis in image.sysdir.1 to google_apis_playstore

1PlayStore.enabled=false
2image.sysdir.1=system-images/android-32/google_apis/arm64-v8a/

will become:

1PlayStore.enabled=true
2image.sysdir.1=system-images/android-32/google_apis_playstore/arm64-v8a/

Wipe Data and Cold Boot the the emulator device. You should now see Play Store in apps.

Installing Google Play Store on AVD emulator devices

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Why? Not all AVD profiles come with Play Store installed. I needed a phone with a notch, and decided on Google Pixel XL, but turns out it didn’t have Play Store installed

I found the answer on StackOverflow, and it’s pretty straight forward. Compare the config.ini file with another AVD device that does has Play Store installed and then update the one for Google Pixel XL after figuring out the change

Using keytool for keystore management and app code signing

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 20:15:26 +0500

The app signing key never changes, but the upload key can be reset if the two are not the same (i.e. your signing key is different from your upload key)
To use the Android App Bundle format, you need to opt-in to Play App Signing
By using a separate upload key, you can request an upload key reset if the key is ever lost of compromised
It is recommended you generate your own keys, just in case you want to release the app to other marketplaces (e.g. Amazon Appstore, Samsung Galaxy Apps, F-Droid)
It is recommended you use two separate keys for app signing and upload (instead of making your app signing key your upload key).
We sign the app with upload key and then upload it to Google Play Console. Google then uses our upload certificate to verify our identity, sign our builds with app signing key and distributes them to devices.

App Signing Key	Upload key
Serves as master key, never changes during the lifetime of your app. Can not be reset if lost/stolen	An additional layer of security, can be reset if lost/stolen
Generated by us. Managed by Play Console	Generated by us (optional). Managed by Play Console
Play Console manages and keeps this key and automatically signs the uploaded app for distribution	Kept by us

Generate a keystore

1keytool -genkeypair -v -keyalg RSA -keysize 4096 -validity 10000 -keystore KEYSTORE_OUTPUT_FILE.keystore -alias KEY_ALIAS

You’ll get a prompt for setting the keystore password and then asked for some additional info about yur organization. Next it’ll ask you for a password for your key Alias

Export and upload a key and certificate from a Java keystore

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 18:31:27 +0500

Play Encrypt Private Key (PEPK) tool

Use this tool to export private keys from a Java Keystore and encrypt them for transfer to Google Play. When providing the app signing key for Google to use, select the option to Export and upload a key from a Java keystore and follow the instructions to download and use the tool.

Download the PEPK tool
Run the given command to generate app signing key and certificate zip PEPK tool. Replace values for your keystore (foo.keystore, foo, and output.zip)