How Can I Ship an App Bundle Without Giving Google Signing Authority?

Question

In Milena Nikolic's "What's New in Google Play" presentation as part of Google's #android11 launch, she said:

As we continue to improve the App Bundle, we expect it to become a requirement for all new apps sometime in 2021.

Everything I have seen in the documentation suggests that the only way to work with App Bundles in the Play Store is to use their Play App Signing service, such as:

Enroll into app Play App Signing. Otherwise, you can't upload your app bundle to the Play Console.

(from https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle)

If you build and upload an Android App Bundle, you must enroll in app Play App Signing.

(from https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/upload-bundle)

And, because app bundles defer building and signing APKs to the Google Play Store, you need to opt in to Play App Signing before you upload your app bundle.

(from https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/app-signing)

But, Google's documentation has many gaps.

So, is there an option that I'm missing, whereby I can distribute an app via an App Bundle without using Play App Signing? For example, perhaps I could use bundletool to build the individual APK bits, sign them locally, then upload those results.

Answer 1

Just to confirm what the documentation says, it is a requirement to use Play App Signing in order to publish with App Bundles on Google Play.

Source: I am on the Android team at Google.