Does using a self-signed certificate for signing apps influence which Android devices can see the app in the Play Store?

Question

this is a more tightly focused version of the same problem which I've asked about here: App on Play Store invisible to Android 11 devices

In that previous question, I only briefly wondered about signing. Here, I'm deliberately focusing on signing.

In March 2021, the Play Store started asking that I comply with the new v2 signing method whereby the developer must sign an APK before uploading it to the store. I successfully moved over to that method, the APKs are accepted by the Play Store. When I do it wrong, the Play Store rejects the APK immediately on the upload completing.

At some point (and it's hard to say if these things are truly related) I got feedback from people running devices on Android 11 saying they can't see my app in the store at all. Devices < Android 11 continue to see updates that I upload for my app.

I've done a ton of troubleshooting of the AndroidManifest.xml file. See the other question that I linked to higher up. I don't think that's the problem.

I am left with wondering about the signing aspect of the situation. All I can tell you about my certificate is that it's self-signed. Is this a problem for either the Play Store or Android 11 devices?

Thanks for any help.

Michael

Answer 1

No, the certificate you use has no incidence on the visibility of your app in the Play Store or Android in general.

When you say people can't find your app, is it that they can't find it by searching some keywords, or they can't access the Play store listing using a deep link?

There is no real guidance on how to make your app findable on the store using search, it will largely depend on the popularity of your app, the quality of your app, and the competition on the search words with other apps.