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I am developing an android app, I am pretty much completed with everything and now I wish to roll out updates to it in order to maintain and perform some bugfixes. (Note : I don't want my app to be released in the market as its related to my college degree project. i.e. It has only a few audience). If an update is available, I want the user to get notified of the update as soon as they open the app. And when they agree, the app should download the new updated .apk file and when the download is finished, it should automatically prompt the user to install it. (Prompt example attached below)

How do I achieve this without using the android playstore market?

I heard somewhere i can do this by simple version comparison of my app with a public domain (like dropbox or GitHub) which contains a txt file (which has version code) and an updated apk. If the versions match with the txt file, nothing happens. If versions differ, it should show a dialog to download the update.

How do I perform this guys? Please help me out?.. Can someone please help me out with actual java codes? P.s. - I am actually fairly new to all this, and I wish to learn Android studio. Thankyou so much my friends :D

screenshot

Vaibhav Gupta
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  • Just a recommendation - I would still put it on Google Play and use an alpha or beta channel to distribute it to select white-listed users. You can do this on Play and has the added benefit of letting Google distribute the updates and as a student you also gain the experience of what it's like to publish through Google Play. – spartygw Aug 18 '20 at 18:03

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You can achieve it using Play Store(I know you don't want to use it) but its the recommended way to do. In Play Core library iv Google has introduced in-app updates feature where you can roll out updates to the user without rolling out a new apk in Play Store.

Supporting API level 21 and above, the Play Core library allows us to offer in-app updates meaning we can show that an app update is available whilst the user is within the context of our application. For more information, you can visit the developer site.

Swayangjit
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