Can we still remove never-published apps from Google Play?

Question

We develop and publish our own apps as well as apps for others to publish on Google Play. Back when Google Play was Android Market, we used the following strategy for testing the licensing code in apps we developed for others:

1. Upload (but do not publish) the app to our publisher account. The app included our publisher public key with the license check code.
2. Test the app as we set different licensing responses through our developer console.
3. When we were satisfied that everything was working properly, we deleted the uploaded app from our Android Market account. We could do this because the app had never been published.
4. Change the publisher public key in the licensing code to that of our partner.
5. Deliver the .apk to our partner to publish in their publisher account on Android Market. This worked because we had deleted the app from our Android Market account.

It's been the better part of a year since we did this. Does anyone know if the same strategy can be used with Google Play? In particular, do the parts in bold above still work? Is it still possible to complete remove all traces of an app that has been uploaded but never been published, so that someone else can then upload and publish it?

One alternative, which we will do if we must, is to change the app's package name for our license testing phase. However, this is complex and can introduce additional errors when we change the package name back.

Another alternative is for our partner to set up a user account for us. However, while user accounts can be restricted from viewing financial data, they cannot (as far as we can tell) be restricted to working with a single app. We can understand why partners would not want to allow such broad access.

Gladygladys

Would it not be fairly simple to just knock-up a test app and go through the processes you've used previously to see if they still work? – Coxa

@Coxa - I could do that for the first part, but I'd have to set up a separate publisher account (and pay the registration fee) to check whether the last step still works. Any volunteers to help with this test? :-) – Gladygladys

Answer 1

UPDATED ANSWER:

Sadly, Google Play no longer supports draft apps at all. So the entire strategy is defunct. See the Android docs on testing in-app billing for the alternatives that Google has provided.

ORIGINAL ANSWER:

Well, the answer is that the strategy still works. If you've never published the app, you can remove all traces of it from Google Play and another publisher account can then upload an app with the same package name. All you need to do is deactivate (if necessary) and then delete all .apk files and the app will disappear from your developer console.

If the app was ever published, this will not work. You can unpublish an app, but you cannot delete any .apk files that were ever active while the app was published. (This behavior is undocumented as far as I can find.) This is unfortunate; it would be nice to be able to completely remove all traces of an app that was never downloaded by anyone. Even better would be a sandbox area that emulated all aspects of Google Play, including buying your own app (and would support doing it through the emulator).

I also discovered that the delays involved in propagating changes to all Google Play servers seems worse than it did a year ago with Android Market. In one case, when testing license responses I had to wait two hours after uploading (but not publishing) an app before the response came back as anything from "NOT_MARKET_MANAGED".

Gladygladys

The sandbox idea is great, I'd love to test out my upgrades this way. – Showy

This is not unfortunate because when you upload an app on market and once a user installs it, market starts all mappings between application on market and user device application i.e. application crash reports, ratings and other users' reviews etc. Thats why you can not remove all traces. As this package is live on the some mobile phones. This is not the case with unpublished apps so developers can remove it. – Pennant

@2506 - You make a good point about .apk files that have been downloaded at least once. What is unfortunate is that, once published, Google will not allow an apk file to be removed even if it was never downloaded to a device. – Gladygladys

Those apps can even still be opened in Google Play when using a URL with the package name – Circuity

@Seppl - Isn't that a bit of circular logic? They are available by specific URL only because Google does not allow them to be removed. That's hardly an argument in support of Google's policy--if an app was never downloaded, there's no good reason I've heard why it could not be completely removed from Google's system (which would then render the URL no more useful than the URL for an app that has never existed). – Gladygladys

@TedHopp That wasn't meant to be as an argument in support of Google but rather as info for other developers. I was quite surprised when an app that wasn't published anymore (and couldn't be found by searching) was available with the url. – Circuity

Hi. I had uploaded my app to developer account associated with my old gmail account few months back but couldn't make the registration payment at that time. Now today I have done the payment but with a new gmail account. But when I try to upload my app on this new account it gives an error 'You need to use a different package name because "xyz" already exists in Google Play' so i need to remove my app from my old google account. But unfortunately I can't access my old developer account now as i didn't made the registration payment before uploading the app there. – Delilahdelimit

So whenever i login to my old developer account it redirects to payment page. Is there a way to remove my developer account through gmail so i need not to login to developer account to remove it. Please help me out. – Delilahdelimit

@Delilahdelimit - The same package name cannot be used for two apps in Google Play, whether on the same or different accounts. Did you try signing out of Google Play and logging in with your old gmail account? If that did not work, I think you need to take the problem up with technical support for Google Play. You need to somehow log into your developer account and publish from there. If you go to play.google.com/apps/publish‎, you should see something there about not being able to access your account. (You may need to sign out of Google Play first.) – Gladygladys

Answer 2

All you need to do is go to the APK files and delete every .apk file in the console, this will remove the application from Google play, I have tried with unpublished. But not for published.

PS. I just did it with one of mine for a test :D

Albany

While a published app can be un-published, I don't think that it can be fully deleted. At least it never used to be that way. Google used to have a policy that a published app (as identified by package name) could not be transferred to another publisher account. If what you describe is correct, it would circumvent the policy. Perhaps, though they changed it for apps that have been published but never downloaded. – Gladygladys

I always thought it was just while that application was active, because the package name is used in the url of the application thus you can not have two applications of the same package as it would need the same link – Albany

Nope. Once you publish an app, then the publisher console won't have a link to delete the .apk files. (Probably just for .apk files that were active at any point while the app was published.) I just tried it. Now I permanently have a trash application in my publisher account. :( – Gladygladys

I just tested this and you can not fully delete an app version that has been live, even for a few seconds. You can only unpublish it. Which automatically also means that you can't upload a new apk with the same version code. – Lichter

Hey, I am facing a problem,I published application and by mistake i uploaded old apk and I have also lost my old keystore file. So console is not accepting new apk with new keystore. Now whether i should unpublish app,and can i publish app again with same name and package or not. What better i could do..? – Nath