Android Play Store Deployment: Publish Your Ionic Apps

• Open the Build menu
• Choose Generate Signed Bundle / APK
• Follow the prompts to sign the AAB with your keystore file

To create an AAB binary locally using Android Studio:

For complete details, view the Android documentation.

If you haven’t made the switch to Android app bundles yet, you will need to opt into Play App Signing in the Google Play Console to be able to publish them.

First, create a new app in the Google Play Console. In order to enable app signing, you’ll need to navigate to the new release screen, on one of the Production, Open testing, closed testing, or internal testing pages.
Select the Create new release button as seen below (it doesn’t matter which release type, since you don’t have to actually go through with creating a new release right now):

Under the App integrity section, click the Change app signing key button:

Next, select the Export and upload a key from Java Keystore option. This is the only way in which you can retain the key and have Google Play use it for signing. If you’re using Appflow to build Android apps in the cloud, this is also the required option so you can upload the keystore file to Appflow.

Follow the instructions on the screen to generate the Keystore and you can use the same Keystore file to sign your app in the Appflow dashboard as well. If you need any help generating the Keystore file, you can refer to our docs here.
Once the generated zip file has been uploaded, you’re all set! Build an AAB binary signed with the keystore file then upload it to Google Play.

As of now, existing apps aren’t required to use the AAB format, but you can still enroll them using Play App signing.

To opt into app signing, you’ll need to upload the app signing key used to sign previous releases of the app. Navigate to Setup -> App integrity, then choose one of the two methods seen in the screenshot below. Once the key has been uploaded, you can enroll in Play App Signing.

tip

With smaller app sizes, improved performance, and enhanced security, the AAB binary format is a win for app developers and users alike. If you have an existing Android app using the APK format, consider migrating to AAB to take advantage of all the great features it provides.