How to update/upgrade your Android APK during Staged Rollout in Google Play

Question

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) to roll out the new APK at an initial percentage rate; it was not intuitive to update/upgrade the APK when I needed to publish a hotfix to only those (users) in staged rollout.

So how did I do it? See my answer below.

Answer 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.

Answer 2

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!