Is it possible to change the package name of an Android app on Google Play?

Question

From Dianne Hackborn:

Things That Cannot Change:

The most obvious and visible of these is the “manifest package name,” the unique name you give to your application in its AndroidManifest.xml. The name uses a Java-language-style naming convention, with Internet domain ownership helping to avoid name collisions. For example, since Google owns the domain “google.com”, the manifest package names of all of our applications should start with “com.google.” It’s important for developers to follow this convention in order to avoid conflicts with other developers.

Once you publish your application under its manifest package name, this is the unique identity of the application forever more. Switching to a different name results in an entirely new application, one that can’t be installed as an update to the existing application.

More on things you cannot change here

Regarding your question on the URL from Google Play, the package defined there is linked to the app's fully qualified package you have in your AndroidManifest.xml file. More on Google Play's link formats here.

Nope, you cannot just change it, you would have to upload a new package as a new app. Have a look at the Google's app Talk, its name was changed to Hangouts, but the package name is still com.google.android.talk. Because it is not doable :) Cheers.

As far as I can tell what you could do is "retire" your previous app and redirect all users to your new app. This procedure is not supported by Google (tsk... tsk...), but it could be implemented in four steps:

1. Change the current application to show a message to the users about the upgrade and redirect them to the new app listing. Probably a full screen message would do with some friendly text. This message could be triggered remotely ideally, but a cut-off date can be used too. (But then that will be a hard deadline for you, so be careful... ;))

2. Release the modified old app as an upgrade, maybe with some feature upgrades/bug fixes too, to "sweeten the deal" to the users. Still there is no guarantee that all users will upgrade, but probably the majority will do.

3. Prepare your new app with the updated package name and upload it to the store, then trigger the message in the old app (or just wait until it expires, if that was your choice).

4. Unpublish the old app in Play Store to avoid any new installs. Unpublishing an app doesn't mean the users who already installed it won't have access to it anymore, but at least the potential new users won't find it on the market.

Not ideal and can be annoying to the users, sometimes even impossible to implement due to the status/possibilities of the app. But since Google left us no choice this is the only way to migrate the users of the old apps to a "new" one (even if it is not really new). Not to mention that if you don't have access to the sources and code signing details for the old app then all you could do is hoping that he users will notice the new app...

If anybody figured out a better way by all means: please do tell.

No, you cannot change package name unless you're okay with publishing it as a new app in Play Store:

Once you publish your application under its manifest package name, this is the unique identity of the application forever more. Switching to a different name results in an entirely new application, one that can’t be installed as an update to the existing application. Android manual confirms it as well here:

Caution: Once you publish your application, you cannot change the package name. The package name defines your application's identity, so if you change it, then it is considered to be a different application and users of the previous version cannot update to the new version. If you're okay with publishing new version of your app as a completely new entity, you can do it of course - just remove old app from Play Store (if you want) and publish new one, with different package name.