The existing posts on using AAB are focused on Scriptoria and I am having difficulty applying them to the Apps that we are building and publishing ourselves.
My main question is how do we upload our current local keystores, to enable the ability to to upload/release AABs.
In one place I read that we must create a new keystore, in another place I read we have to convert it somehow before uploading.
I thought the Keystore is what authorizes subsequent uploads/release. If I create a new keystore for an existing App wouldn’t that break my ability to do uploads/releases?
When I tried to add the APK for Internal testing on the Play Console one of the warnings included that it was an APK and not an AAB, so I just build it as an AAB and added the AAB with a new version code (4 instead of 3). The keystore came up as an option to use the Play Store app signing, so I just used this.
This is my first time doing this so I am not familiar with the process.
Is it better to use your own keystore or use the Play Store/Console’s app signing?
Does it make much difference whether you upload an APK or an AAB?
For apps that were previously published as APKs and you would like to switch to AABs, then you have to upload the keystore that the APK was signed with.
@MikeB, It looks like you found the correct instructions for encrypting your keystore for upload to Google Play.
For new apps that have not been published with APKs, you can only publish them now as AABs. It is fine to use the Google generated keystore for signing the app for release. You will still need to use a keystore to sign it for uploading to Google Play. It should be the same keystore each time you upload but there is a process to change the keystore you are using for upload.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
It seems that now the public key Google provides needs ras aes encryption (whatever that is) and the command is slightly different. This worked for me today:
cmd shell: java -jar files_location\pepk.jar --keystore=keystore_name --alias=alias_name --output=files_location\keystore_name.pepk --rsa-aes-encryption --encryption-key-path=files_location\google_provided_publickey
