How To Update/upgrade Your Android APK During Staged Rollout In Google Play

I recently used Google Play's 'Staged Rollout' feature and slowly published my company's (redesigned) V2 of its Android app. Although it was very simple (following the instructions

Solution 1:

• Log in to your Google Developer Console and select your app
• Select the "APK" view from the left menu
• Click and switch to "Advance Mode" from the the upper right corner
• You will now see "Deactivate" option become available for the version in Staged Rollout
• Click "Deactivate", and ignore the error "This configuration cannot be published..."
• Click on "Upload new APK to Production" button shown on top of the error snippet
• Select the new APK with the same versionName but with a higher versionCode than the old APK in staged rollout.
• Click "Save Draft"
• Click "Publish APK" button appeared on top; don't worry it won't publish at 100%.

At this point it is up to you to Increase the Percentage or remain at the same rate of staged rollout.

Voilà, now you just rolled out a hotfix to only those (small percentage of users) in staged rollout.

Solution 2:

Here is Google's official answer to this:

If a staged rollout is in progress and you discover an issue with your app (e.g. crashes, bugs), you can publish an update to the staged rollout version using your Google Play Developer Console.

1. Sign in to your Google Play Developer Console.
2. Click All applications.
3. Select an app.
4. On the left menu, click APK.
5. Select Upload new APK to production.
6. Next to Save Draft, Click the Down Down arrow.
7. Select Publish as staged rollout.
8. Select a percentage.
   • To replace your previous staged rollout version, select the same percentage as your previous version. Compared to your previous staged rollout version, you can select the same rollout percentage or higher.
9. Click Save and publish.

After you publish the replacement APK, affected users that received your previous update through the staged rollout will receive an update.

Note: If you're using Advanced Mode to manage multiple APKs, the updated APK must be the same configuration as the APK in the current staged rollout. When you upload a replacement APK, you will need to deactivate the APK you're replacing.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/3131213?hl=en-GB

EDIT:

Google Release management and related links have changed recently (August 2017), you can now see the same information here: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6346149?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=7072031

Specifically:

• When you halt and then resume the roll-out of your release, you'll be affecting the same set of users.
• When you do a staged roll-out of a new release before completing the roll-out of the previous release, the new release will use the same group of users as the previous release (depending on the percentage of the roll-out).

Solution 3:

The answer for the new console:

• Click Publishing Overview in left column;
• Click 'Manage' on the right side
• Enable 'Managed publishing on'
• When the release has been reviewed, it's not released until you decide!

Solution 4:

I was able to do this without any weird workarounds. Similar to serkan's steps above, but doesn't require reusing the same version name or any deactivation steps.

• Log in to your Google Developer Console and select your app
• Select the "APK" view from the left menu
• Click on "Upload new APK to Production" button
• Select the new APK (can have a new version name, version code)
• Click "Publish APK" button

At this point, my 20% rollout APK was replaced, and the new APK did not roll out to 100% of customers yet.