✨My First Published App On Play Store✨

So the month was November 2023 when I had finished my first prototype of Hue Calculator. It just had the basics and was nowhere ready for production use. To be honest, I had built it at a time when I was very new to Android and wanted to test my knowledge. I thought putting a spin on a normal calculator would be a good start. After it was done, I just forgot about it.

Until now.

I’ve always seen job descriptions saying that a published app is a good skill to have-and rightly so. As an Android developer, knowing how to deploy an app to the Play Store is a valuable skill. So I thought of uploading the first app I truly built to the Play Store, as a sort of homage.

I created my developer account, and then I started making the app production-ready. And oh boy, was I in for a ride.

After tweaking the app a bit, I saw how many bugs it had, and it was not at all ready for publishing. So I started fixing each bug, and the cycle repeated over and over again. This was the time when I tested the app in so many different ways to find bugs in order to fix them. I was amazed at how many minor bugs there were, along with some major ones too. So much so that I had to replace the evaluation library I had used.

After working on it for quite some time, on and off, it was finally ready for publishing. I created the Logo, Made the App Screenshots for better promotion of the app and wrote a sweet App Description. Then as the Play Store policy says, I had to run 14 DAYS of closed testing with at least 12 testers. So I enlisted the help of my friends and family (huge thanks to them, by the way). And test they did.

Before closed testing, I tested on my device only, and as soon as the build was released for testers, I started getting messages about bugs in the app—some logical, some UI-related, and even some feature requests. I was amazed and kind of relieved because it was thanks to external testing that these bugs were found.

So I fixed them and released a new version for testing, continuing until all the reported bugs were gone. After 14 days of testing, I filled out the form Google requires for production access, and after waiting for 2 more days... IT CAME.

An email came stating that my app was live on the Play Store. The feeling of seeing your own app, that you built, live on the Play Store for everyone to see—it’s an emotion I can’t really describe, but many of you may have experienced.

Now, some of you may be thinking that it’s a very simple app or that it’s not unique, but honestly, that doesn’t matter. My first app, the one I built, is on the Play Store, and even with its flaws, it’s mine. And I’ll be uploading better apps after this one because I’m just getting started.

And for those who wanna try it out and give reviews good or bad, I’ll appreciate both of them.