Deprecations

This page lists all the managed Google Play features which are in a deprecation period. This includes features and methods under the Google Play EMM API and features in the managed Google Play store.

Reason for deprecating the features

The reasons for deprecating a legacy feature or method may include:

  • Improve product quality: Some legacy features are complex and error prone, and it's not rare for developers to make mistakes when integrating with these features, which then results in bugs visible to customers and end-users. By migrating to modern replacements, an EMM improves the quality of its EMM product.
  • Reduce product maintenance: It can take a lot of effort for both EMMs and Google to maintain some legacy features, typically because of bug investigation or extensive regression testing before each new release. Migrating to modern replacements or deprecating features with low usage allows both EMMs and Google to spend more time building the new features that users need.
  • Enable future developments: Some legacy features are incompatible with new features that Google would like to release. Deprecations unlock these new features and add value for users.

How deprecation works

The deprecation period for a feature or method begins on the announcement date. The feature or method will continue to be available throughout the deprecation period (typically 12 months if no turn off date is indicated). However, once the deprecation period has elapsed, the feature or method is expected to be decommissioned and will no longer be available.

For most deprecations, Google recommends an alternative approach to provide the same functionality, often with no visible change for customers and end-users. When available, the alternative approach is described in the deprecation announcement in the following list.

Instead of migrating to the proposed alternatives within the Google Play EMM API, you can also migrate to the modern Android Management API, which is simpler to integrate and maintain.

If you have questions or feedback, you can contact Google through the Android Enterprise EMM Provider community.

Active deprecations

This section lists all features and methods which are in a deprecation period.

App approval (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The app approval in managed Google Play is deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025. This includes:

Instead of using app approval to control available apps, you can set the Devices policy for each device. If you want to allow IT admins to preselect a list of apps for the whole enterprise, you can store that list in your EMM server, and you don't need to pass it to Google using the Play EMM API.

If you use the EMM notification AppUpdateEvent, you can instead use the high-priority update mode (documentation coming soon) to automatically update an app on a device when the developer releases a new app version.

For adding apps to collections in the managed Google Play iframe, EMM's should be invoking the SELECT mode in the iframe's URL parameters.

Lost capabilities

There is no replacement for the EMM notifications AppRestrictionsSchemaChangeEvent and ProductAvailabilityChangeEvent. If you expose a feature in your EMM console based on these notifications, you will need to deprecate this feature.

Entitlements and available product set (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The following methods of the Google Play EMM API are deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025:

To control the available apps that users can install from the managed Google Play store, you can set a Devices policy.

You can define the managed Google Play Store behavior by setting the field policy.productAvailabilityPolicy, and select available apps by adding them to policy.productPolicy. See how to distribute apps.

Installs API (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The following methods of the Google Play EMM API are deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025:

To install apps on devices, you can instead set policy.productPolicy.autoInstallPolicy in the Devices policy.

To force-update an app, you can instead use the high-priority mode.

If the app cannot be installed on the device, the method installs.update returns the reason for the failure (productNotAvailableInCountry, productNotCompatibleWithDevice, etc.).

However, the reason for the failure is not exposed for apps installed using the policy. To address this gap, the managed Google Play Store will soon return the app feedback to your DPC with the reason for the failure to install the app using the policy.

This change will be rolled out on or before September 30, 2022.

The installs.delete will no longer be deprecated and be kept as it is. You can also remove apps from devices for custom DPCs using PackageInstaller.uninstall().

Product methods: getAppRestrictionsSchema and getPermissions (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The following methods of the Google Play EMM API are deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025:

To get the permissions of an app, you can instead call the method products.get.

The method products.get will also soon return the app restriction schema of the app with the same format as returned by products.getAppRestrictionsSchema. This change will be rolled out on or before June 30, 2022.

Managed configurations methods (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The following methods of the Google Play EMM API are deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025:

To set managed configurations for an app and for a device, you can set policy.productPolicy.managedConfiguration in the Devices policy.

Service account key service (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The following methods of the Google Play EMM API are deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025:

If you're using programmatically created ESAs, we recommend that you switch to using a service account configured using Cloud IAM to call the Play EMM API. From Cloud IAM, you can create and delete keys for service account keys.

You can choose to continue using programmatically created ESAs for now, but you will no longer be able to rotate the ESA keys.

Closed track field (Announce: September 1, 2021 - Turn off: September 30, 2025)

The field policy.productPolicy[].tracks[] in the request of the method devices.update is deprecated as of September 1, 2021, and will be turned off on September 1, 2025.

You can retrieve the list of tracks available to an enterprise for a specific app using products.get. You can then distribute a track to a device by setting policy.productPolicy[].trackIds[] in the Devices policy. See how to distribute closed tracks to users.