Did you know that the Android App Bundle has become the gold standard for publishing on Google Play? Explore its benefits.
When I first heard about this new upload format known as App Bundle, I was very excited! Many of the problems we developers faced like creating APKs for different API versions, device types, etc. are now being pushed to Google Play.
Starting today, developers will be able to use Dynamic Delivery to create optimized APK files that meet the requirements of the user’s device and deliver them at runtime for installation.
All of this is done through the Android App Bundle distribution format. Let’s dive into what the new official publishing format for Android is all about.
What is Android App Bundle?
Android launched a new official publishing format called Android App Packages (.aab) which offers a more efficient way to build and release your app. It also allows you to quickly provide a great user experience in a small app, which in turn increases installation success and reduces uninstall rates.
Android App Bundles are Google’s recommended way to create, publish, and distribute an app across multiple device configurations.
Did you know that the Android app bundle has become the gold standard for publishing on Google Play? More than 600,000 apps and games are currently using the app bundle in production, representing more than 40% of all releases on Google Play including Netflix.
Now let’s take a look at the benefits of app bundles.
Benefits of using the Google Android App Bundle
1. Downsizing
App bundles help reduce a significant amount of app size! On average, developers have seen 20% size savings compared to APKs. You can visit the new app size report in the Google Play console to see how much your app could save.
Did you know that Adobe has reduced the size of Adobe Acrobat Reader by 20% with the help of application bundle development? Not only that, but some of these size savings from early adopters of app bundles are showing astounding results.
2. Increased number of app installs and lower number of uninstalls
Size-increasing apps wouldn’t be a problem if we had unlimited storage on our devices. But as we know, that is not the case. As the size of the app increases, the number of installs decreases!
As a domino effect of saving size with the help of the xamarin app bundle for android, the number of app installs will increase. This has also resulted in more frequent updates and significantly fewer uninstalls.
3. Higher efficiency
Android app bundle development allows you to create a single artifact that includes all of your app’s bundled code, resources, and native libraries. So you no longer need to create, sign, upload, and manage version codes for multiple APK files. So, the efficiency will increase if you install a package of Android applications on your device.
4. Faster downloads
Your app can be effectively adapted to each device on Google Play, which means that the process of downloading and installing your app will be faster.
5. Integrated codes
With the Android Studio app bundle, you can prepare for the 64-bit requirement without increasing the size of your app. As a result, Play will deliver the appropriate native code required for each device.
6. Increased speed of engineering
The whole process of creating an application will be speeded up from creating dynamic and independent modules to designing, testing, and releasing them. Engineering speed will greatly increase with a unified package of Android applications.
For example, The Book My Show claimed that the build time of their app (on a brand new build, without any caching) was reduced by 70% – this is because, with app bundles, it only bundles each resource, not separating them. as with APK files.
7. Reduced manual effort
During Android app development, several manual activities can be completely automated. Once development is complete, its link is automatically uploaded and shared on a specific Slack channel. No manual intervention is required.
8. Dynamic delivery enabled
Application packages introduced us to a new concept known as dynamic delivery. Conditional features can be delivered at installation time based on properties such as device capabilities (eg AR/VR), user country, or device version. Users also have the option to install features in on-demand mode instead of at install time. They can even uninstall features they no longer need.
This will help users customize their experience as per their requirements. This will also come in handy if you don’t want to increase the size of the app in the long run. It also allows us to reduce the initial size of our application and then only offer additional features to users who can use them.
How to create and deploy Android App Bundles?
Unlike APK files, app packages are a publishing format that includes all of your app’s code. So it cannot be deployed directly to the device. With the help of the android studio, creating a project as a signed application package is just a few clicks away!
To build application packages, follow these steps:
Step 1: Start by downloading Android Studio 3.2 or higher. It’s the easiest way to bundle your apps.
Step 2: Add support for Play Feature Delivery by including the base module, organizing the code and resources for the APK configuration files, and optionally adding feature modules.
Step 3: Now start creating Android App Bundle using Android Studio. You can even deploy the app to the connected device from the app bundle by editing the debug/launch configuration and selecting the “deploy APK from app bundle” option.
Step 4: The final step will be to test and publish the application package.
Test your App Bundle
Once you’ve created an Android app package, you should test how Google Play will use it to generate APK files and how those APKs will behave when deployed to a device. You can use the following methods to test the same:
- Test your application package locally using the package tool. It will generate APK files from your app package and deploy them to the connected device.
- Share your app using a URL. It’s the fastest way to upload an app package and share the app as a Google Play Store link with your testers.
- Set up an open, closed, or internal test. This is another way to test custom delivery options, such as downloading on-demand app features.
Final words
The future has a lot in store for all of us and it’s up to us to keep up with it! I can tell you without any doubt that the future lies in Android app bundles. As a Mobile app development company in San Jose, we can help you stay ahead of the game.
