Introducing a brand new Play Retailer for giant screens

Posted by Allison Chang, Product Supervisor, Google Play

Final 12 months at Google I/O, we shared some big changes coming to the Play Retailer for giant display units. Since then, we’ve seen much more individuals utilizing massive screens for work and play, throughout hundreds of thousands of energetic Android units. Apps and video games play a crucial position in shaping the on-device expertise, so we’ve redesigned the Play Retailer to assist customers get probably the most from their tablets, Chromebooks, and foldables.

At present, we’re introducing 4 main updates to assist customers discover high-quality massive display apps on Play: refreshed app itemizing pages, rating and high quality enhancements, streamlined retailer navigation, and a split-screen search expertise.

Your retailer itemizing web page is one of the simplest ways to display the performance and worth of your app, so we’ve revamped the expertise to place your content material entrance and heart. Video games with high-quality videos will present a video banner on the high of their app itemizing web page, permitting customers to get a way of gameplay in an immersive means. We have additionally reorganized apps and video games particulars pages in a multi-column format, bringing extra of your content material larger up the web page.

To advertise high-quality apps that shine on massive screens, we’ve made a number of rating adjustments to spice up high quality throughout Play. Apps and video games that adhere to our large screen app quality guidelines will now be ranked larger in search and Apps and Video games House. This helps customers discover apps that resize nicely, aren’t letterboxed, and help each portrait and panorama orientations. Editors’ Alternative and different curated collections and articles may even contemplate these standards going ahead, creating new that includes alternatives for optimized apps.

Final 12 months, we additionally introduced app itemizing warnings and decreased visibility for apps and video games that don’t meet Play’s per-device technical high quality bar. This extends our telephone technical high quality necessities for telephones to massive screens, and impacts apps and video games with an 8% user-perceived crash charge or 8% user-perceived ANR charge on the person’s gadget.

These warnings will seem in your app particulars web page, with the purpose of setting person expectations for the way apps will look and performance on their units. We’ll start rolling out these adjustments in late August, so there’s nonetheless time to make use of Android vitals in Play Console or the reporting API to observe and enhance your app’s stability metrics.

Lastly, to assist customers higher perceive the in-app expertise up entrance, we’re more and more that includes your retailer itemizing property straight on Apps and Video games House.

New content material ahead codecs will use type issue particular screenshots, movies, and descriptions to show a preview of the app expertise and assist customers make set up choices. As a part of this transformation, apps with massive display property that comply with our content quality guidelines can make the most of these richer codecs, and can occupy extra display actual property on Play homepages. As you audit your massive display property, listed below are some greatest practices to assist your app stand out:

1. Add separate screenshots for every type issue. Show the precise in-app or in-game expertise, specializing in the core options and content material so customers can anticipate what the app or recreation expertise will likely be like.
2. Use high-quality photographs with the correct facet ratio.
3. Keep away from overloading screenshots with textual content or time-sensitive copy that requires frequent updates.
4. We don’t suggest together with gadget imagery, as this may turn into out of date shortly or alienate some person teams.

For extra suggestions and tips to constructing prime quality apps, go to our quality hub.

For extra seamless shopping, we’ve simplified our retailer navigation and moved to a left-side navigation rail on bigger screens. This places menu gadgets nearer to customers’ thumbs and makes them extra accessible, particularly when holding a tool in panorama mode.

We’ve additionally made sure facets of the shop simpler to seek out to assist customers uncover helpful and common apps. For instance, we’ve moved the High Charts and Classes sections to Apps and Video games House. On tablets and Chromebooks, we’ve made the Youngsters expertise a main tab, since these units are sometimes shared with youngsters.

Lastly, we’re excited to announce a brand new search expertise that makes it simple to find and examine apps from inside the search outcomes web page.

We’re launching a split-screen search expertise on massive screens, displaying search outcomes and app particulars pages aspect by aspect. This prevents customers from switching backwards and forwards when exploring new apps and streamlines the invention course of.

These adjustments will start rolling out over the approaching weeks, and are only the start of our journey in making a tailor-made Play Retailer expertise for giant screens. For extra inspiration and examples of high-quality massive display apps, go to our app design gallery or try our recent session on app quality from Google I/O.