How can I unpublish an app from production and republish beta in google play without creating a new app?

Question

I first accidentally uploaded an APK to production in the google play developer console.

So I generated a new apk with higher version code and published it in beta channel as Open Beta Testing so it will listed in play store as Early Access .

Now when I click publish, it actually publishes my app to the play store, even though I have now uploaded to the Beta channel. There is not intimation that app is in early access.

It behaves like production release.

There is no way to delete the production APK.

The unpublish option in console will unpublish the whole app ..There is no option to unpublish production alone.

I hope I don't need to delete the whole app project from google play?

My Steps
I searched many questions in Stackoverflow like my question about Google play issues. They suggested to create an new app with different package name. (This is not a duplicate question)

But I don't want change my package because I registered the package name with many API providers and backend providers (like Firebase , Fabric)

And we like the package name very much.

And the old questions in SOF is pretty outdated. So I want to know any changes happened in google policy.

Answer 1

You can unpublish the app and wait to publish app in right time. How to unpublish an app in Google Play Developer Console

I am not sure if this will affect closed tests etc., but I don't think so

Answer 2

Once you have published in production, you always have to have a production APK. You can't unpublish in production and still have a version in beta.

Answer 3

I am able to unpublish the production app at : Store Presence > Pricing & Distribution > App Availablity > Unpublish. After the unpublish of the app at production - my app continues to available at internal test/beta distribution.