Update manually installed app from Play Store

Question

I'm developing an app that soon will be released on Google Play Store.

Meanwhile, some of our users will manually install the app on their device using ADB and a provided APK. When the app will be on the store it will be an update (with different VersionCode) but it will still use the same package name and the same certificate used for the previous APK.

Will the already manually installed app receive this update? (I personally think not, because if I recall well the store has an history of installed app on a device, right?)

Otherwise, should we ask to our user to manually (re)install the app from the store? And in that case, will the Preferences be preserved?

Answer 1

When you publish app on Play Store you can choose to publish it in Beta or Alpha Test, so that only some users can view and install it from the store, so that when your app is ready to become visible to all of the users you can move it in Production.

To achieve this, you can create a Google Group, invite some users for Beta Test to this group, and then add in developer console the email of the group you created.