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Google recently announced that they are going to start restricting publishing Android apps that do not target recent API level versions. I support this change, but I need some special case exceptions, and have not found an appropriate forum to request those. I know that this is not it, but hope someone here can point me where I should go.

I publish an app that has been out for a long time and still has a significant number of users running it under Gingerbread. It also uses a number of support libraries, and the recent versions of those libraries, the ones targeting the latest API levels, no longer support Gingerbread devices. The end result is that I can not build and apk that supports API level 9 if it targets an SDK level greater than 23. Which is not going to be accepted come November.

I did have a plan to address this issue. That was to start distributing two apk files for each update. One that targets the latest API level and has a min API of probably 21. The other will support older devices and will have a target and max API of 20 and a min API of 9. The problem is that the older target API apk will not be accepted by the Play Store unless I can convince someone that they should continue to accept any app where the target and max API levels are the same.

kencorbin
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    While you make excellent points, [questions about app store policies are off-topic](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/272165/are-developer-centric-questions-about-application-stores-on-topic) and recommendations for off-site resources are off-topic. My guess is that you will need to use the higher `targetSdkVersion` even for the older support libraries. You can add the `//noinspection GradleCompatible` comment to block the Lint warning that you get for having an older support library than the `targetSdkVersion`. And then pray that it holds up. – CommonsWare Jan 05 '18 at 22:49
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    FWIW, I [wrote up some other options](https://commonsware.com/blog/2018/01/08/android-version-ratchet.html) that you could consider for addressing the issue. – CommonsWare Jan 08 '18 at 14:49
  • Have you got that platform or page where we can share our experience or give some feedback about new release or updates – Shiv Shrivas Aug 07 '23 at 07:05

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