App Distribution with Android App Bundles

[Hilikus]

If I use App signing by Google Play , how can I distribute my signed release app via Firebase App Distribution? I can't upload the .aab file to AD and I don't know how to download the signed app that gets created by google to upload it to AD (and even if I could, part of android app bundle is Dynamic Delivery) so how can I use Firebase App Distribution to distribute my app?

I can't find anything in the documentation saying how to do it or saying that App Distribution doesn't support this either. My plan is to use AD to run a beta program of the final, release app before actually releasing it to the play store

Thank you

[Kevin Kokomani]

Hi there,

App Distro only supports files of the formats .apk and .ipa. If you convert your AAB to a universal APK you can upload that to the App Distribution console. Here are some steps:

1. Download the bundletool, as you will need it to generate APKs from your AAB.

2. Use the following command to generate a set of universal APKs from your app bundle. --mode=universal is the key point, otherwise a .apks file will be generated which cannot be uploaded.

bundletool build-apks --mode=universal --bundle=/MyApp/my_app.aab --output=/MyApp/my_app.apks
3. Then, unzip the .apks into a directory. This will generate a universal APK file.

unzip /MyApp/my_app.apks -d /MyApp/universal_apk

The result should be a .apk file that includes all your resources and is still uploadable to the App Distribution console.

Let me know if this works for you!

Cheers,

Kevin

[Hilikus]

That worked perfectly. 

Thank you Kevin

[Kevin Kokomani]

Glad to hear it!