Publish private apps

Note: If Google is your EMM provider, you can publish private apps from the Admin console. If you use a third-party EMM provider, you may be able to publish private apps from your EMM console. For more information, contact your EMM provider.

To publish private apps from Play Console, you need to register for a Google Play developer account. The account gives you the correct administrator privileges to upload and publish private apps to managed Google Play. You can then use your EMM console to distribute these apps to users.

For private apps, you have to specify settings so that they're only available to users in your organization and you can make them easy to find. You also have to specify certain settings if you're hosting the app, rather than Google. To upload and publish private apps, you only need an Android App Bundle or an Android application package (APK) and a title.

Register as a developer

To publish any private or public app, you must register as a developer. To register, take the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Google Account that will act as the account owner for your developer account.
2. Open Play Console to begin registration.
3. Check the agreement box to accept the Developer Distribution Agreement.
   • If your account has previously violated this agreement, you can't register as a Google Play developer.
4. Go to Continue to payment.
5. Pay the registration fee and click Accept and continue.
6. Enter your developer account details, including a developer name which is the name that is displayed in Google Play.

It can take up to 48 hours for your Google Play developer registration to be processed.

Publish to your own organization

Once your app is restricted to organizations, your app will be private and will only be available to those organizations. If you want your app to be publicly available, you will need to publish a new app with a different package name.

After publishing, your app will be available to search and distribute via your EMM console within a few minutes.

1. Open Play Console.
2. Go to All apps > Create app.
3. Select a default language and add a title for the app.
   • The name should be exactly how you want it to appear in managed Google Play.
4. Go to Test and release > Setup > Advanced settings.
5. Select the Managed Google Play tab.
6. In Organizations, click Add organization.
   • For each organization that you want to publish the app to, enter the Organization ID and a description (or name) and click Add. You can enter up to 1000 organizations per app.
7. Click Save changes.
8. (Optional) Configure additional parameters for the app on other pages.
9. Go to Test and release > Production to create a new release and upload your app bundle or APK.
10. After confirming all your app details are correct, you can click Start rollout to Production to roll out your release.
    • To learn more, see Create and roll out a production release.

Allow third-party developer publishing

If you use third-party developers (such as an agency or software development house) to create custom private apps for your organization, you need to send them your Organization ID so that they can publish apps to your organization.

To get your Organization ID:

1. Open the EMM iframe.
2. Click .
3. Copy your Organization ID string from the Organization details box and send it to your developer.

Note: Third-party developers may be able to publish private apps directly from their development tools. For more information, see Publish private apps for your enterprise customers.

To publish a private app within a client's organization (as a third-party developer):

If you’re an agency developer who wants to manage the publishing flow on behalf of your client, or if you’ve built an app for multiple organization clients and don't want the app to show up in the public Play store, you can use your clients’ Organization IDs to publish these apps directly to your client's organizations.

1. Open Play Console.
2. Use the Organization ID provided by your client to publish the private app to your client's organization.