Android Android 12 games disappearing from devices and Google Play

[clee2005]

Hi gang!

I've just had several emails from users that updated their (Pixel) devices to Android 12 and our games have disappeared from their devices and they cannot find them in the Google Play store. I am targeting API 31, Min 19 and compile 31. Using NDK 21. I'm not clear what else I need to be doing to support Android 12. Also not clear why the games would have disappeared from their devices... availability from the store I can understand if there was some incompatibility, but disappearing from the device is odd.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[rIKmAN]

Any ideas?

A quick Google shows a reddit thread of someone having the same issue.

This was also in the results which sounds like it might be relevant:

Android 12 update will automatically delete your apps

THE NEXT update for Android, known as Android 12, looks set to include a feature that automatically deletes some of your apps and the data that they hold on you. But before you get too alarmed, don't worry, it's all for a good cause.

www.express.co.uk

Seems like it might be a Google issue/feature rather than anything specific to GMS?

 

[clee2005]

A quick Google shows a reddit thread of someone having the same issue.

This was also in the results which sounds like it might be relevant:

Android 12 update will automatically delete your apps

THE NEXT update for Android, known as Android 12, looks set to include a feature that automatically deletes some of your apps and the data that they hold on you. But before you get too alarmed, don't worry, it's all for a good cause.

www.express.co.uk

Seems like it might be a Google issue/feature rather than anything specific to GMS?

Thanks @rIKmAN I hadn't seen those articles. That second post about the app hibernation feature of Android 12 might be something, however the article says for unused apps. These people are complaining because they play our game frequently and noticed the moment it was unavailable. Perhaps it's a bug in this feature.

 

[rIKmAN]

These people are complaining because they play our game frequently and noticed the moment it was unavailable. Perhaps it's a bug in this feature.

Yeah I thought that too, maybe it's a bit overzealous and counts an "unused app" as something not used in too short of a time frame like 24hrs or something?

I would reach out to Google and see what they say about it and if you are able to contact the users see if you can get information on the actual time they last used the app before it disappeared. Using something a couple of times a week could be classed as "frequent" but the new feature might not think so.

Post back any info you find out as it sounds like you won't be the only affected by it from what I've read so anything you can learn will no doubt be helpful to others when it happens to them.

 

[clee2005]

Ok, so I had some confused details from one of the users. Turns out all the apps are still visible from Android 12 in the Google Play Store, but they disappeared from his device and when he goes back to the store to reinstall the listing says "INSTALL" but fails to install each time with some generic error. So it's not the store restricting from Android 12 devices, it seems to be some incompatibility with the build itself.

 

[clee2005]

So it looks like targeting SDK 31 is a bad idea as there is a new requirement for intent-filters. When I try and install on an Android 12 device I get this error :

Error -504 while installing com.donkeysoft.wordwowseasons: INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_MANIFEST_MALFORMED: Failed parse during installPackageLI: /data/app/vmdl1784522141.tmp/base.apk (at Binary XML file line #120): com.donkeysoft.wordwowseasons.RunnerActivity: Targeting S+ (version 31 and above) requires that an explicit value for android:exported be defined when intent filters are present

Apparently, the android:exported="true" (or false) needs to be added to each surrounding parent element according to this article. https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/lets-be-explicit-about-our-intent-filters-c5dbe2dbdce0

So I targeted SDK 30 instead and was able to install it onto an Android 12 Pixel 4. So this is at least a current work around. We'll need some changes to support SDK 31.