So, you have been waiting for this special day while doing a lot of hard work on your application, now you are going to release your Android application in the production but you are thinking if there is something I am missing or forgetting. Then, this is the ultimate release checklist for you.

Check the Twitter Thread:

Add analytics to your Android application

Check if you have added the correct analytics at all the places where you had meant. The best way to check is that just think of what data you need and what are the metrics you want to measure, see if you can get those data and metrics from the analytics that you have added or not. If you are able to get all of those then you are good to go.

Apply proguard in your Android application

Applying proguard to your application helps in many ways. It minifies the code which leads to the app size reduction. It also obfuscates the code which makes it difficult for the developer who is trying to reverse engineer your application.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

So, now let’s look at the important points that should be considered while applying the Proguard in your application.

Do not forget to add the Proguard rules in proguard-rules.pro file for any library that you have included in your project.

Let say you are using Okio library, you will have to add the following rule

-dontwarn okio.**

Add the rule for the classes on which you do not want to apply Proguard using keep class.

Let say you do not want to obfuscate the class AmitShekhar.java, then you have to add the following rule:

-keep class com.mindorks.AmitShekhar**

Do not use something like AwesomeFragment.class.getSimpleName() as a fragment TAG. Proguard may assign the same name (A.class) to two different fragments in different packages while obfuscating. In this case, two fragments will have the same TAG. It will lead to the bug in your application.

Keep your mapping file of the Proguard to trace back to the original code. You may have to upload it at different places like PlayStore Console for seeing the original stack-trace of the crashes.

Recommended Reading

Check your application size

Less the size of your application, the more the chance of getting the download, less the chance of getting uninstall. So, application size matters a lot. Do not forget to remove all the unused resources.

Recommended readings for app size reduction:

We can reduce the size of the app using the below technique.

How to reduce APK size in android?

How to create multiple apk files for Android application?

Add crash reporting library

Check if you have added the crash reporting library correctly in your Android application or not. You should verify if the key is correct for the production or not.

Check out the crash reporting libraries on Mindorks Android Store.

developer.android.com

Upgrade testing for your application

Test if your application is getting updated successfully to the new version from the previous version. You may have missed upgrading the database version after altering the database. And also, you may have missed writing the migration for that alteration in the database.

Turn off logging and debugging

Make sure to turn off all the logging and debugging in the release build. You should not ship your Android application with any library which is meant only for the debug. Make sure to remove those from the release build.

Be ready with WHAT’S NEW in your application

Have the WHAT’S NEW ready with you to add it on the play store while uploading the new build.

Be ready with the updated screenshot

Have the new screenshot ready with you to update while uploading the new build. It will help the user knowing about the correct features in your updated application.

Check your application version name and version code

Do not forget to put the correct version name and version code for the release build. If you do the mistake, it creates problems while managing and tracking different releases.

Measure the metrics around the application performance

You should measure the metrics like:

Frames Per Second

CPU Usage

Memory Usage

Network Traffic

Disk

Refer this article for the metrics.

Check for app localization

If your Android app supports different languages, then make sure that you have added all the strings for all the languages.

developer.android.com

Test your device on various OS versions and different screen sizes

Considering the fragmentation of the Android, it comes in all shapes and sizes, with vastly different performance levels and screen sizes and also there are many different versions of Android. So, you should test or run on a wide range of Android devices.

developer.android.com

developer.android.com

Look through your application from the security perspective

Check if there is any key or something which is important and can be hacked easily. You should work on securing those keys.

Follow up on the PlayStore feedback

If you have solved something which users had reported in the previous version, make sure to follow up on those feedback with the user.

That’s it for the release checklist. Happy learning :)

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