Signing an android app

MelodyCats

Hi all,

It's been about a year and a half since I updated my android apps. The last time I did so, we could still submit .apk - now I guess its .aab

I just signed one of the apps and it saves the file as: "appoutput9.apk"

Does that seem right?

Is that what I would submit to the developer console or do I need to do something else to it so it becomes an .aab package.

Apologies if this seems like a very newbie question. I feel a bit out of the loop with the latest publishing changes...

Thanks for any help!

MelodyCats

Ok so I got one step closer thanks to ForumNinja's post here:

https://help.gamesalad.com/gamesalad-cookbook/publishing/4-android-publishing/android-app-bundle-aab-terminal-signing/

I've now managed to create an AAB file. So far so good! Thanks @ForumNinja

However when I upload the file it tells me: "in order to upload an Android App Bundle you must be enrolled in Play App Signing."

I'm now confused as to how I can do that... Anyone done this?

When I try to upload my existing Keystore I get this:

MelodyCats

Ok I figured out how to enroll in 'play signing' using my existing KeyStore so will just write it here in case anyone else has trouble:

First Download the PEPK Tool as shown in my screenshot above.

Open Terminal and copy paste the command - the thing that looks like this:

$ java -jar pepk.jar --keystore=foo.keystore --alias=foo --output=encrypted_private_key_path --encryptionkey=eb10fe8f7c7c9df715022017b00c6471f8ba8170b13049a11e6c09ffe3056a104a3bbe4ac5a955f4ba4fe93fc8cef27558a3eb9d2a529a2092761fb833b656cd48b9de6a

1. The pepk.jar (though not highlighted in bold in the command line) should be replaced with the path to the pepk tool you downloaded. (You can also drag and drop the file into terminal) Anyway should look something like /Users/yourUsername/Downloads/pepk.jar
2. foo.keystore (keystore) is the path to the keystore containing your private key (original app signing key) to export. (Can also drag/drop your Keystore) Something like /Users/yourUsername/Documents/Appkeys/keystore
3. foo (alias) is the alias of the private key of the app you want to sign.
4. encrypted_private_key_path (output) is the path to file in which to output the encrypted private key. You choose a name for it so it could look like: /Users/yourUsername/Documents/Appkeys/NameofAppPrivateKey

The command would prompt you to input your key store and key password.

Now you can upload the new encrypted key.

Hope that helps!

I'm only discovering this all tonight so maybe someone already has a much better way of doing this!

RedRobo

Thanks @MelodyCats for taking the time to explain this. Now about to embark on this process after also not publishing on Android for well over a year!

This will definitely help me get my head round this confusing process! 👍️

RedRobo

Just for info, I also had previous apps on Google play that were apks and signed remotely with my private key.

I just went through the process of working out how to download and sign an aab bundle and extract an .apk for testing.

Thought I might try uploading the .apk to Google just for the hell of it and to my surprise it was accepted. Seems that as long as the .apk is created from an app bundle it seems to work, for now anyway! Be aware this will not work for new apps.

Can I make a polite request @adent42, that we work towards a single point of truth for app signing information/help (mac and windows) that we all know is relatively up-to-date. I ask this as not sure if the cookbooks are still getting updated?

Some of the problems I grappled with:

Information is scattered (especially for those of us using Windows PC)- which version of Java do we need (I grabbed the latest)? - Which sdk version do we need (the link to files within the cookbooks is out of date I think and didn't work for me, I grabbed later versions using Android Studio) - How the hell do you use Android Studio!?

Also, for anyone on Windows wondering how to extract an apk from an apks file; Just download and use 7zip, much easier for non-programmer types like me!

btw, really appreciated the 'step by step' AAB signing help within the cookbooks, really helpful thank you.

Next stop; enrolling into 'Play Signing' pepk process, thanks again for posting your experience of this @MelodyCats Very helpful..

smurfted

Has this process got any easier yet?