googleplay/publish/console.jd

page.title=Developer Console
@jd:body


<p>Once you've <a
href="{@docRoot}distribute/googleplay/publish/register.html">registered</a> and
received verification by email, you can sign in to your Google Play
Developer Console, which will be the home for your app publishing operations and
tools on Google Play. This sections below introduce a few of the key areas
you'll find in the Developer Console.</p>

<div class="figure" style="width:756px;">
<img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-home.png" class="frame">
<p class="img-caption"><strong>All applications page</strong>: Gives you a quick
overview of your apps, lets you jump to stats, reviews, and product details, or
upload a new app. </p>
</div>

<div class="figure-right" style="width:450px;">
<img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-profile.png" class="frame">
<p class="img-caption"><strong>Account details page</strong>: Specifies your developer
identity and contact information, accounts for app testing, and more.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="profile">Your account details</h3>

<p>The account details page is where you specify basic information about yourself
or your company in a developer profile. The information in your developer profile
is important because it identifies you to Google Play and also to your customers.</p>

<p>During registration you must provide the information for your profile, but you can
go back at any time to edit the information and change your settings. </p>

<p>Your developer profile contains:</p>
<ul>
<li>Your developer name &mdash; the name you want to show users on your store
listing page and elsewhere on Google Play. </li>
<li>Your developer contact information &mdash; how Google can contact you if
needed (this information isn't exposed to users).</li>
<li>Your developer website URL &mdash; shown to users on your store listing page
so they can learn more about your company or products.</li>
</ul>

<p>On the account details page you can also register for a merchant account, set
up test accounts for Google Play licensing, and more. </p>

<h3 id="user-accounts">Multiple user accounts</h3>

<p>If you are working with a team, you can set up multiple user accounts to
access different parts of your Developer Console. The first account registered
is the <em>account owner</em>, with full access to all parts of the Console. The
owner can add <em>user accounts</em> and manage what parts of the Console they
have access to. For example, an owner can grant users access to publishing and
app configuration, but not access to financial reports. </p>


<div class="figure-right" style="width:450px;">
<img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-details.png" class="frame">
<p class="img-caption"><strong>Store listing page</strong>: Lets you upload your
graphic assets, description, support information, and other information to
create the store listing page for a specific app.</p>
</div>

<h3 id="merchant">Linking your Merchant Account</h3>

<p>If you want to sell apps or in-app products, you can link your Google
Wallet merchant account to your developer profile. Google Play uses the linked
merchant account for financial and tax identification and monthly payouts of
sales. </p>

<h3 id="details">Your store listing details</h3>

<p>The Developer Console lets you set up a colorful storefront page for your app
called the <em>Store Listing page</em>. Your Store Listing page is the home
for your app in Google Play &mdash; it's the page users see on their mobile
phones or on the web when they want to learn about your app and download it.
</p>

<p>You can upload custom brand assets, screen shots, and videos to highlight
what's great about your app, and you can provide a localized description, add
notes about the latest version, and more. You can update your store listing at
any time, even if you don’t have a new version of your application.</p>

<h3 id="uploading">Uploading and publishing</h3>

<p>From the Developer Console you can quickly upload a release-ready APK and
publish it when you're ready. The app is a <em>draft</em> until you publish it,
at which time Google Play makes your store listing page and app available to
users. You can unpublish the app at any time.</p>

<h3 id="controls">Distribution controls</h3>

<p>In the Developer Console you can manage what countries and territories the
app is distributed to and, for some countries, you can choose what carriers you
want to target.</p>

<p>You can also see the list of devices that your app is currently available to,
based on any distribution rules declared in its manifest file.</p>

<h3 id="selling">Selling and pricing your products</h3>

<p>The Developer Console gives you tools to set prices for your apps and in-app
products. Your app can either be free to download or priced (charged before
download). </p>

<div class="sidebox-wrapper">
<div class="sidebox">
<p>See <a href="http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138294&topic=2365624&ctx=topic">Supported locations for distributing applications</a> for a list of countries where you can distribute or sell your app,</p>
</div>
</div>

<ul>
<li>If you publish your app as free, <span style="font-weight:500;">it must
remain free</span>. Free apps can be downloaded by any users in Google
Play.</li>
<li>If you publish it as priced, you can later change it to free. Priced apps can be
purchased and downloaded only by users who have registered a form of payment
in Google Play.</li>
</ul>

<p>In addition, you can sell in-app products and subscriptions in your app,
whether the app is free or priced. You can set prices separately for priced apps,
in-app products, and subscriptions.</p>

<p>If you are selling a priced app or in-app products or subscriptions, the
Developer Console lets you set prices in a large number of different currencies.
When users around the world visit your store listing, they see the price
of your app in their own currency. For most countries, the price you set is the
final price charged to users, inclusive of taxes. </p>

<p>To help you manage your prices, the Developer Console provides an autofill
capability that uses recent exchange rates to populate the prices in all
supported currencies. You can change prices for apps and in-app products at any
time, just by saving changes in the Developer Console.</p>

<h3>In-app Billing</h3>

<div class="sidebox-wrapper">
<div class="sidebox">
<h2>In-app Billing</h2>
<p>For details on how to implement In-app Billing, see the
<a href="{@docRoot}google/play/billing/index.html">In-app Billing</span></a>
developer documentation.</p></div></div>

<p><a href="{@docRoot}google/play/billing/index.html">In-app Billing</a> is
a Google Play service that lets you monetize your apps in more ways by selling
in-app products and subscriptions. In-app products are one-time purchases, while
subscriptions are recurring charges on an monthly or annual basis.</p>

<p>From the Developer Console you can create product lists for in-app
products and subscriptions, set prices, and publish.</p>

<div class="figure-right" style="width:410px;">
<img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-reviews.png" class="frame">
<p class="img-caption"><strong>User
reviews page</strong>: Gives you access to user reviews for a specific app.
You can filter  reviews in a number of ways to locate issues more easily
and support your customers more effectively.</p>
</div>

<h3>User reviews and crash reports</h3>

<p>Google Play makes it easy for users to submit reviews of your app for the
benefit of other users. The reviews are also extremely important to you, since
they give you usability feedback, support requests, and important functionality
issues direct from your customers. </p>

<p>The Developer Console also lets you see crash reports, with stack trace and
other data, submitted automatically from Android devices, for debugging and
improving your app.</p>

<h3>App statistics</h3>

<p>The Developer Console gives you detailed statistics on the install
performance of your app. </p>

<p>You can view installations of your app measured by unique users, as well as
by unique devices. For user installations, you can view active installs, total
installs, daily installs and uninstalls, and metrics about user ratings.
For devices, you can see active
installs as well as daily installs, uninstalls, and upgrades.</p>

<p>You can zoom into the installation numbers along several dimensions,
including Android platform version, device, country, language, app version, and
carrier (mobile operator). You can see the installation data for each dimension
on a timeline charts.</p>

<p>At a glance, these charts highlight your app’s installation peaks and
longer-term trends, which you can correlate to promotions, app improvements, or
other factors. You can even focus in on data inside a dimension by adding
specific points (such as individual platform versions or languages) to the
timeline.</p>

<div style="width:530px;">
<img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-stats.png" class="frame">
<p class="img-caption"><strong>App statistics page</strong>: Shows you a variety
of statistics about a specific app's installation performance over time.</p>
</div>