Most people who are placing their apps on the Google Play Store are already aware of the Android version of the Play Console App. It’s an app to monitor the distribution of your apps. At first I was a bit skeptical of why I would need this tool, but I have to admit, it is a pretty handy to for keeping track of your apps which are on the Play Store.
It is a fairly straightforward and intuitive tool. Click on the app that you want to see and you will be instantly greeted with all the usual statistics you need. One one page they have placed the latest installs/uninstalls as well as your feedback and ratings. They even included your recent crashes that were reported to Google. That’s a lot of information in one spot.
By the way, if your version doesn’t look like mine, you might want to try out substratum for theme options. Here I am using Pitch Black Origins.
Some of the greatest features are the instant alerts if you want to know the minute that someone leaves you a review. For instance, you can select to know when you get any review, or if you just want reviews for 1 or 5 or any other number of stars. I can see how that might actually get annoying, if you were to develop an app that millions of people download, but for a small time app maker like myself, it doesn’t happen often enough to be a problem.
Another great feature is being able to read the reviews and respond to them. I was sure to show you one of my all time favorite comments that I received. But, for better or worse, it is nice to get a notification and an opportunity to respond to your customer feedback.
One thing I have noticed, though, is that there is a delay between collected data, and data pushed to your device. The ratings and customer reviews seem to happen instantly, but the data for the statistics seems to be one to three days behind. That’s not much of an issue for me, my apps stats are changing so slowly that it is easy to catch up, but if you needed the moment by moment charts, you might be better off by logging into the Play Console website instead.
While I haven’t searched out the depths of the Play Console App, I think it is a pretty neat tool overall. It’s great to get all of those statistics at a glance for your app.
Linux – keep it simple.