Bye Apks? Google Requires New Apps On Android To Use App Bundles Starting August 2021

Google today announced that the company will start requiring new apps to be published with the Android App Bundle Starting August 2021.

App Bundles

Hello Android App Bundle, bye APKs

According to Google, this will replace APK as the standard publish format and now over 1 million apps are using app bundles in production. This includes the top 1,000 apps and games on Google Play like Adobe, Duolingo, Gameloft, Netflix, and more.

Google noted that one of the main benefits of this is making apps smaller by 15 percent on average versus universal APK which is faster to download which can lead to more installs and fewer uninstalls.

Also, it has Play App Signing that protects your app signing key from loss by using Google's "secure" infrastructure and offers the option of upgrading to a new and cryptographically stronger app signing key. 

There is a Play Feature Delivery that gives the ability to customize what feature modules are delivered, Play Asset Delivery that reduces waiting type by dynamically delivering large assets while cutting delivery costs, and other future improvements as well.

Google also said that there is very little work required to build an ABB instead of an APK.

However, it is not yet clear how will this affect other app marketplaces like the Amazon Appstore which makes Android apps work on the new Windows 11 OS.