Google Play (Android)

Google Play is the primary platform for distributing Android apps to billions of users worldwide. It's a powerful marketplace that allows you to reach a large audience and monetize your app.

To submit your app to the Play Store, you'll need to follow a series of steps. We'll walk through those steps here.

Developer account

A Google Play Developer account is required to submit your app to the Google Play Store. You can sign up on the Google Play Console and pay the one-time registration fee.

To publish apps to Google Play, you must verify your identity. See the official guide for more information. Next, you'll need to create a new app in the Google Play Console by clicking the Create app button.

Submission

After registering your developer account, setting it up, and preparing your app, you're ready to publish it to the Play Store.

There are multiple ways to submit your app:

• Manual submission: Upload your app bundle directly to the Play Store via the Play Console.
• Local submission: Use EAS CLI to submit your app.
• CI/CD submission: Use ready-to-use GitHub Actions workflow to automatically submit your app.

The first submission must be done manually, while subsequent updates can be submitted automatically. We'll go through each approach in detail below.

Manual submission

This approach is not recommended, as it is more error-prone and time-consuming due to manual steps. However, it's still the only way to submit your app for the first time. You can also use this route if you need to upload a build without EAS Submit (for example, during service maintenance) or if you prefer a fully manual flow.

Create the app entry in Google Play Console

1. Visit Google Play Console and sign in. Accept any pending agreements if prompted.
2. Click Create app, then enter your app name, default language, app type, and pricing (free/paid). Confirm policy declarations.
3. Finish initial setup tasks (App access, Ads, Content rating, Target audience, Data safety, Privacy policy URL).

Upload the .aab file to a track (internal/closed/open/production)

1. The fastest route for a first upload is often Internal testing. Go to Internal testing → Releases (or choose Closed/Open/Production), then click Create new release.
2. Upload the .aab file, add release notes, and review any warnings.
3. Save and continue through the checks until you're ready to submit for review or roll out to testers.

Verify and submit for review

1. Complete Store listing assets and metadata if not already done.
2. Resolve any policy warnings. When ready, start the rollout to request a review.

After your first manual upload is accepted, you can use Local submission or CI/CD submission for subsequent releases.

For more information, please refer to the guides listed below.

Local submission

First, you need to upload and configure a Google Service Account Key with EAS. This is the required first step to submit your Android app to the Google Play Store. Follow the guide on uploading a Google Service Account Key for Play Store submissions with EAS for detailed instructions.

Next, you have to get your app bundle — if you followed the checklist, you should have the .aab file in your app folder from the build step. If you used GitHub Actions to build your app, you can find the results in the Builds tab of your EAS project. Download the artifacts and save them on your local machine.

Then, navigate to your app folder and run the following command to submit your app to the Play Store:

eas submit --platform android

The command will guide you through the submission process. You can also configure the steps of the submission process by adding a submission profile in eas.json.

To speed up the submission process, you can use the --auto-submit flag to automatically submit a build after it is built:

eas build --platform android --auto-submit

This will automatically submit the build with all the required credentials to the Play Store right after it is built.

CI/CD submission (recommended)

TurboStarter comes with a pre-configured GitHub Actions workflow to automatically submit your mobile app to the Play Store. You'll find the workflow in the .github/workflows/publish-mobile.yml file.

To use this workflow, upload your Google Play Service Account key to EAS and check your Android credentials setup by running:

eas credentials --platform android

This way, you avoid storing the JSON key in your repository or CI/CD provider.

That's it! After completing these steps, trigger the workflow to submit your new build to the Play Store automatically 🎉

Review

After filling out the information about your item, you're ready to submit it for review. Click on the Send for review button and confirm that you want to proceed with the submission:

To control when your app is released after review, you can configure Managed publishing in the Google Play Console.

After submitting your app for review, it will enter Google's review process. The review time may vary depending on your app, and you'll receive a notification when the status updates. For more details, check out the Google Play Review Process documentation.

When your app is approved by Google, you'll be able to publish it on the Play Store.

You can learn more about the review process in the official guides listed below.