Category: Guide

Google has been asking various information about your apps to provide correct information to the end user, you should provide these information timely and correctly as otherwise there is a risk of app being Rejected as well.

Here there is a guide (if you published app using Androapp wordpress plugin) to fill some of those forms.  Before we go into details, we wanted to explain that androapp as such doesn’t collect any user data and most of these is collected for advertising, analytics via the SDKs we add. Here are some of the SDKs we use in androapp

SDKS

implementation 'com.google.dagger:dagger-android:2.35.1'
implementation platform('com.google.firebase:firebase-bom:30.0.1')
compile 'com.github.castorflex.smoothprogressbar:library:1.0.0'
implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:21.0.0'
compile 'com.google.android.ads.consent:consent-library:1.0.8'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-location:19.0.1'
compile "com.google.firebase:firebase-core"
compile "com.google.firebase:firebase-messaging"
compile 'com.squareup.retrofit2:retrofit:2.3.0'
compile 'androidx.cardview:cardview:1.0.0'
compile('com.mikepenz:materialdrawer:5.5.0@aar') {
    transitive = true
}
compile 'com.nineoldandroids:library:2.4.0'
compile 'com.github.ksoichiro:android-observablescrollview:1.6.0'
compile 'com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.5.2'
compile('com.appnext.sdk:ads:2.6.5.473')
compile 'com.appnext.sdk:banners:2.6.5.473'
compile( name:'androidappslider', ext:'aar')
compile 'com.mikepenz:fontawesome-typeface:4.7.0.1@aar'
implementation "com.google.guava:listenablefuture:9999.0-empty-to-avoid-conflict-with-guava"

Permissions

Also the list of permissions we added in manifest file, We don’t know the exact purpose of each one of these, they are added mostly while adding some integrations and some of these may be obsolete.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS_FULL" />

<!-- GCM requires this permission to recieve and register. -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK" />
<uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.c2dm.permission.RECEIVE" />

<!-- Network State Permissions to detect Internet status -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.VIBRATE" />

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/>

<!-- if you want to load images from a file OR from the internet -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION" />

With that here are our suggestions to fill the forms, remember these are just the suggestions to the best of our knowledge, not legally binding in any way, if you have doubts consult the sdk providers directly.

1. Advertising ID

Apps that use advertising ID and target Android 13 or later must declare the com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID permission in their app manifest. If you don’t include this permission, your advertising identifier will be zeroed out, any attempts to access the identifier will receive a string of zeros instead of the identifier. Learn more

Here we use Ads & analytics sdk’s, which already declared the required permission in the manifest file.

We suggest to select Yes here, feel free to select No if you don’t use those features, in that case any attempt to load advertising Id will get all 0’s.

3. COVID-19 contact tracing and status apps

Select third option here

4. Government apps

1. Go to https://console.firebase.google.com/
2. Select the existing project which you might have created during android app setup by following these steps
3. Click on Add App
4. Select the Web App
5. Give you web app a name – for your reference
6. And click on Register App button
7. Copy the script code in the next step (just the selected one in below snapshot)
8. And paste it to Firebase Config box in Web Push Notifications -> Account Settings tab

This is to troubleshoot if push notifications are not working on IOS while they are working fine on Android.

Checkout this link first for push notifications are not working on Android app.

believing that your push notifications are working on Android, please check following to ensure they work for IOS

1. Create auth keys(.p8 files) for push notification https://androapp.mobi/blog/create-apn-auth-keys-ios-push-notification/396 and upload them to your firebase project https://androapp.mobi/blog/upload-apn-auth-keys-firebase-project/402
2. Check the bundle id used while creating app id and package name while creating firebase app for IOS
   1. if it is not the same, you need to create new firebase app with the bundle id used for app, update it in the account & settings tab, trigger an Android build (so that we get the new id at our server)
   2. send an email to us mentioning that you have changed firebase app id and would like to get the new app for the same.

Issue: Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID policy and section 4.8 of the Developer Distribution Agreement

Google Play requires developers to provide a valid privacy policy when the app requests or handles sensitive user or device information. We’ve identified that your app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier, which is subject to a privacy policy requirement. If your app collects the Android advertising ID, you must provide a valid privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Console, and from within the app.

Even if you don’t use Advertising ID yourself and just use admob libraries, these libraries use this Advertising ID internally to show targeted Ads to your users.

If your app is removed for this reason, you can add a privacy policy to your play store listing, you can use this link to generate privacy policy: https://app-privacy-policy-generator.firebaseapp.com/ (please do consult your legal consultant as well).

You can follow these steps to generate the privacy policy

1. open the link https://app-privacy-policy-generator.firebaseapp.com/
2. Enter details as below, replace PuzzlersWorld with your App Name
3. Select Admob and Firebase Analytics on the right
4. Click on Generate button
5. Copy the text and create a page in your website

Update Privacy Policy link to Play store account

1. Once you have your privacy policy link
2. Login to google play developer console: https://play.google.com/apps/publish/
3. Select the App with issue
4. Go to Store Presence -> Store listing and scroll to the bottom
5. uncheck not submitting privacy policy at current time and enter your privacy policy link 
6. And click on Resubmit App button
7. Please wait for 48 hours for Google to process the update

You can follow these simple steps to add home menu option

1. Login to your wordpress admin dashboard
2. go to Appearance->Menus
3. Select your app menu (which you selected in AndroApp->Configure tab
   
4. Expand Custom Links
5. Enter Your website link* in the URL textboax (exactly as it is in AndroApp->Look & Feel section
6. Enter Home in Link Text textbox
7. drag the home menu option to top
8. Save Menu
9. And restart your app, you should see Home menu option in your app menu

Note: * if you are using single post/page for your homepage, you might want to put that single post/page link instead

By default all of your website’s urls are opened in webview(i.e. in the app).
similarly,  all external urls are opened in external browser by default.

We have added a feature to override this behavior, it is available since app version 11.02 (only in android version as of now).

Regex tricks which can be helpful

1. Open all external links in app

Enter .* in Regex to open external url in app textbox

2. Open links from selected hosts in app

Enter https://puzzlersworld.com.*|https://shipmycard.com* in Regex to open external url in app textbox

above will open all the urls from https://puzzlersworld.com and https://shipmycard.com in app, you can add multiple hosts separated by pipes(|).

If you are wondering on how to test the regex, use this nice website to check if the urls matches the regex you want to use: http://www.regexplanet.com/advanced/java/index.html

for above example, we tested it by entering

we got this output for above input

you can see that it evaluates to true for 1,2 & 4, that means regexes matches for the url’s in 1,2 & 4 and these url’s will be opened in app.

3. Open some link from your site in mobile browser

Lets say we have an app created for https://bestsmswishes.com website and we want to open this link https://bestsmswishes.com/there-is-no-better-friend-than-a-sister/ in external browser, instead of in the app itself.

i will enter https://bestsmswishes.com/there-is-no-better-friend-than-a-sister/ in Regex to open your website url in mobile browser textbox

4. Open all of your websites pdf links in mobile browser

enter .pdf* in Regex to open your website url in mobile browser textbox

This is a great way to handle some of your links differently, we will recommend playing around with the regex tool to handle your cases , once again here is the link for your reference: http://www.regexplanet.com/advanced/java/index.html

What is AndroApp Plugin

it is a wordpress plugin, to create an Android and IPhone App – without any programming language.

How to install?

you can install it on any wordpress website by following these simple steps

1. Login to your wordpress dashboard and Plugins->Add New from the left sidebar
2. Search for AndroApp and click on Install Now button
3. Click on Activate Plugin link in the next screen
4. AndroApp plugin is installed on your site, now you can click on Settings link to configure it OR click AndroApp in the left sidebar on your wordress dashboard

If you want to add any shortcode for posts on your androapp mobile app than you can do so by adding below code in your themes functions.php

add_filter( 'json_prepare_post','androapp_overwrite_content', 11, 3 );

function androapp_overwrite_content($data, $post_array, $context) {
	
     $textToBeAdded = do_shortcode("[related_post_shortcode]");
     $data['pwapp_post_content'] = $data['pwapp_post_content'].$textToBeAdded;
		
     return $data;
}

If you want to use post id or some other information you can use $post and $data objects, see below example to use post id
Continue reading “How to Add Shortcode in AndroApp Post Page”

This guide is for little advanced users, who know little bit of php.

We will suggest to try out below changes on test setup and check it is not breaking your website or app.
It will change only the app content, your website content remains as it is.

To Add before the content of all posts

Add this code to functions.php

add_filter( 'rest_prepare_post','androapp_overwrite_content_pre', 8, 3 );

function androapp_overwrite_content_pre($data, $post, $context) {
 $inner_data = $data->data;
 if(!($inner_data['type'] == "post" ||$inner_data['type'] == "page")){
 return $data;
 }
 $textToBeAdded = "add your html code here";
 $inner_data['pwapp_post_content'] =     $textToBeAdded.$inner_data['pwapp_post_content'];
 return $data;
}

To Add after the post content

Add this code to functions.php
Continue reading “AndroApp Tricks to change post content”

This is to help you setup ads on your app via AndroApp plugin

1. Please create publishers account on Admob, Mopub and Appnext
2. Fill Interstitial ad id for Appnext, Mopub and Admob, We give preference in this order mopub, appnext and than Admob. If you dont want to use any provider just leave the ad id blank.
3. Enter Mopub or Admob Bottom Ad unit in bottom/top/listView ad unit ids.
4. To honor the Admob guidelines, we suggest to keep only bottom ad unit or top and listview ad unit(depending on the content on your page). We suggest to honor one ad on a screen at a time strictly as we have seen in past, google rejected few of our clients admob accounts.
5. AppNext Intersitial ads will not work on woocommerce enabled sites, we disabled it due to some technical issue.

Mopub Setup Guidelines

1. Create an account on Mopub.
2. Create a new app by clicking on Add a New App button on top right.
3. Go to App and than create a new Ad unit by clicking Add a Ad Unit button on top right. fill this ad unit id in AndroApp Account Settings Tab
4. Go to networks tab and Add a new network by clicking Add Network button on top right
5. Select ad network of your choice, like Admob, StartApp for facebook audience network etc.
6. Fill in the required information in Set Up Your Inventory section
7. Go to Segments tab from top
8. Click on Global Segments
9. Clear the filters by clicking on Clear All link
10. under your Ad, disable enable by selecting the network and clicking on play/pause buttons in Segment Waterfall section
11. set a ECPM for example $0.05
12. you can add multiple ad networks for one mopub ad unit and those ad networks will fight with each other for a place in your app.