Unpublish and app in Google Play for non beta testers only

20
votes

I already have an app published in Google Play, and now I would like to unpublish it for anyone but a set of known beta testers. My problem is that if I unpublish it, it seems it also gets unpublished for beta testers (since the beta testers feature needs a published app).

What could I do? In other words, what I want to do is:

  1. Unpublish the app so nobody new can install or find it using Google Play.
  2. Upload a new version using the beta testing feature so several known people can test it
  3. In the future, publish the app to everyone again.
2
androidgoogle-playbeta-testing
Sir any solution? I am in the same pit hole with the only difference of using the alpha or internal testing feature instead of beta. - Muhammad Muzammil
Contact Google. - Dan Stef
Still no solution for this, sadly... Please, make the community a favour and help me downvoting the first answer. As you have experienced, it doesn't work at all (besides, he is answering the obvious procedure we all already know and totally ignored my detailed problem). For some reason there are people upvoting that without even understanding the problem, leading others to misunderstandings. - thelawnmowerman
Iqbal Rizky, thanks for your answer, but what you are talking about has nothing to do with the missing feature we want Google Play to have. On the other hand, Brandon's answer is a nonsense, it doesn't work at all. If you publish and unpublish an app, the whole alpha/beta testing system stops working. - thelawnmowerman
Amjad Khan, thanks for your answer, but it doesn't matter what type of testing you try to have: open/private alpha/beta, as soon as you publish the app, you lose the ability to have it published for testers only forever. - thelawnmowerman

2 Answers

3
votes

Under the APK tab select Switch to Advanced Mode Then deactivate the APK in production.

Switch over to the BETA TESTING tab and upload a new APK for the beta

After the APK has been uploaded select Manage list of testers... and add the Google+ community.

When you are ready to go back to production just simply click the Promote to Prod button

-1
votes

I don't think what you are asking is completely possible for Google-Play Store Platform till now.

But one of your point: 1) Unpublish the app so nobody new can install or find it using Google Play, is answered on Google Support.

Google Documentation - Unpublish an app

When you unpublish an app, existing users can still use your app and receive app updates. Your app won’t be available for new users to find and download on Google Play.

Your 2nd point is Tricky. Until and unless you have something in Production.

One workaround can be: Re-Publish the app, it won't take much longer if it has been published before and communicate/share the link with your testers, and then unpublish your app from the store, but this has to be done probably with-in 24 hours.

I haven't tried it, but I'm saying 24 hours since it is the minimal/fast indexing time if your app has a greater audience before, if this isn't the case you can take 2-3 days time.