Xamarin Android App update

Question

I've been developing android apps on Xamarin for 3months now, but I am facing a problem to update the application when a new release is available. The application is not published to any app store(as we use it internally), I know Play store can do automatic updating, but I need to look for an update on our server, I would prefer if all this can be done silently(in the background). here is my current code, this copy's the app to the device:

intent.SetData(Android.Net.Uri.Parse(@"http://xxxxx/downloads/app.test-signed.apk"));
StartActivity(intent);

this installs the app onto the device:

intent.SetDataAndType(Android.Net.Uri.FromFile(new Java.IO.File(Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory.Path + 
"/app.test-signed.apk")), "application/vnd.android.package-archive");
StartActivity(intent);

but this way it asks to install (and I don't think this is the correct way), and doesn't start my app automatically after it was installed. And I am not sure how to wait until the app finished downloading before it tries to install.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue with an app which only gets used internally in my company. I didn't want the app going to the big wide world as the general public wouldn't have any use for it.

So, what we've done is publish the final product as 'Alpha release' in Google Play. You set up a Google Group with a set of e-mail addresses of devices that can access it, and once the app has been downloaded it will update just like any other app from Google Play.

There's an option to 'Promote' it to Beta or Production, but given that it never gets promoted it is never searchable on Google Play.