{"id":277,"date":"2018-09-19T15:02:16","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T23:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gmrgames.com\/blog\/?p=277"},"modified":"2022-08-10T23:16:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T06:16:07","slug":"how-i-learned-about-google-play-app-signing-keys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/2018\/09\/19\/how-i-learned-about-google-play-app-signing-keys\/","title":{"rendered":"Be careful with app signing keys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I received an email from Google Play services. “Your app has been removed from the Google Play Store for a policy violation”, or something like that. How odd, <\/em>I thought. I don’t remember doing anything against their terms of service.<\/em> The email revealed that I didn’t have a valid privacy policy inside the app or on the store listing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh.<\/em> Right. <\/em>The whole GDPR <\/a>thing. It was time to write some privacy policies. After doing so, I began the process of digging up old files to old apps to make the necessary changes to the code. After about 2 hours of reinstalling Android Studio (my hard drive was wiped as some readers may remember), I began the process of exporting the app from Unity to an .APK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I was able to upload the finished .APK to Google’s servers. However, the Play Console threw an error at me; “The signatures do not match”. Wait, what? <\/em>It’d been too long since I’d actually done this process. I googled the error to remind myself and broke out into a cold sweat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, you generate a .keystore file upon first creating an Android app to sign the application with. It prevents people from uploading versions that aren’t originally from you, in the event that a developer’s account got hacked or something. There was no way to recover said .keystore file if you didn’t have it anymore, meaning there was no way to update my app. Ever.<\/a> A full, in-depth system scan revealed no .keystore files. Luckily, with the two brain cells that were still functioning, I managed to remember that the other day I had deleted the app-which-I-was-updating’s Android version off my hard drive, because there was no real difference between the iOS and Android version, and I thought it was redundant. Perhaps it was in there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I checked my Recycle Bin and breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t emptied it. It was still there. Opening the folder, the first thing I saw was a “user.keystore” file at the very bottom of the file list. A quick test confirmed that was the one. Phew.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently those things are important. Don’t lose ’em, kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

HEY, LISTEN!<\/a> It’d be really cool if you checked out the app here on the play store<\/a>, since it just got updated. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

\r\nIt helps me if you share this post\r\n\r\n\r\nPublished 2018-09-19 15:02:16 ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I received an email from Google Play services. “Your app has been removed from the Google Play Store for a policy violation”, or something like that. How odd, I thought. I don’t remember doing anything against their terms of service. The email revealed that I didn’t have a valid privacy policy inside the app … Continue reading Be careful with app signing keys<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[835,921,832,833],"tags":[13,1132,1134,1133],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-random","category-software","category-technology","tag-google","tag-play","tag-signing","tag-store"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2479,"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/2479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rose.dev\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}