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I am setting up different app flavors for my Android app in order to generate different app versions for different app stores.

Now, I am wondering whether I should better use the same applicationId for all stores, or whether I should always use a new applicationId for a new store?

Will I run into any pitfalls when using the same applicationId for all stores?

Julian Eggers
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  • You must have unique appId for each app. So if you published one then use one, if several use different – Style-7 Oct 06 '20 at 16:21

2 Answers2

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I'd suggest you to use the same applicationId. Otherwise users would be able to install multiple versions of your app.

This is from the android documentation about the appliation id:

Every Android app has a unique application ID that looks like a Java package name, such as com.example.myapp. This ID uniquely identifies your app on the device and in Google Play Store.

oemel09
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  • Thanks for the response. I think using the same applicationId will allow the play store to update the app even though it was installed from another store. That way, the custom version of the other store will be overwritten by the google play version, which might be bad for the user experience? – Julian Eggers Oct 07 '20 at 09:19
  • I think users will be more confused if they have the same app installed twice. Do you have any specific use case, or why do you think your users will install and update your app from different sources? – oemel09 Oct 08 '20 at 07:02
  • That's true, but there can be other problems with this. Using the same applicationId will (usually) allow all stores to update the app. If I want to publish one app version with google services in the play store and one app version with Huawei services in the Huawei store, then it would be really bad if, for example, the Huawei store updates the app from the play store and with that replaces the Google services with the Huawei services. I explained this in the answer below. – Julian Eggers Oct 08 '20 at 11:50
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Some more research led me to the conclusion that using the same applicationId (as proposed by oemel09) is the best option (at least in my case).

  • That way, the app can't be installed twice on the same phone. (Two apps with the same applicationId can't be installed on one phone.)
  • However, an app installed from Store X can then be updated with another version of Store Y. This can lead to problems if the app version from Store X is slightly different to the one form Store Y.
  • Using different certificates (app signing) for the two app stores solves this problem. Different certificates won't allow one store to overwrite the app version of another store. (In case you, like me, activated App signing by Google Play you won't be able to use the same certificate anyway.)
Julian Eggers
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