Giggable approved for Google Play Store!

We did it! Google has granted Giggable production access on the Play Store!

That is the last gate between a closed test and a public Android listing. New Play developer accounts have to run a real closed test first — enough testers, for long enough, with a real app — before Google will let you publish to everyone. We did that. They said yes.

What this means

Until now, the Android app lived in closed testing. You could only install it if you joined the tester group and opted in on Play. From here, we can put Giggable on the public store listing. Anyone with an Android phone will be able to find it and install it the usual way — no Google Group, no opt-in page, no “are you on the list?”

iOS has been on the App Store. Android is catching up.

It was not easy. Thank you testers!

This did not happen because we filled out a form and waited. The Google Play Store was surprisingly strict on its requirement of having “at least 12 testers continuously testing over a 14-day period.” I could have bypassed this by registering an LLC and converting my Play account into a business account, but that felt like a lot of investment just to get approved.

So I decided to go the route of finding real android users to test my app. It was not easy. We had to build several features and took several approaches:

• Built an “Android Testers” page where users could add themselves to the necessary Google Group with a click of a button, then follow simple steps to start testing the app
• Asking my Android user friends and coworkers to test it out
• “Free Pizza” promotion using tear-offs on flyers: Enter a code, test the app, and receive a gift card for pizza
• Posting on reddit.com/r/AndroidAppTesters
• Joining the Test Circle app and testing other developers’ Android apps

If you joined from the Android testers page, claimed a flyer code, or just put up with “join this Group, wait ten minutes, then opt in on Play” — thank you so much!!! This is a huge milestone.

Lasting benefits

Ultimately, I’m very glad that I went down the route of actually obtaining testers and not just paying to play, so to speak.I now have a full-featured promotions system that I’m sure I’ll be able to take advantage of in the future. I also honestly learned a lot while testing the Android apps from the other developers in my Test Circle group. Finally, I found several bugs and improvements while going through this process.

What’s next

We still have to ship a production build and turn the public listing on. When that is live, the Play badge on giggable.app will stop saying “Coming soon” and start being a real download link! Woot!

If you are already on the closed test, you do not need to do anything. When we publish, Play will treat the public app as the same app you already have.

Stay tuned — we will post again when you can search “Giggable” on Play and actually get the app.