Android Application Bundles (.aab)

Starting in August, 2021, the Google Play Store requires all new apps to be submitted in Android App Bundle (.aab) format. VoltBuilder can now create these bundles.

The only thing you need to do is add this line to your voltbuilder.json file:

"androidPackageType": "bundle",

VoltBuilder will then produce a file ending in .aab. These files are only used to upload to the Google Play Store: you cannot install them directly to a device. As a result, only release builds have this feature.

An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, and defers APK generation and signing to Google Play.

Google Play uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each device configuration, so only the code and resources that are needed for a specific device are downloaded to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to optimize support for different devices, and users get smaller, more-optimized downloads.

1 Like

Great! Thank you for all the good works that have been done for us! Really appreciate it!

Hi, I tried to supply the voltbuilder.json as specified:

voltbuilder.json: {“release”:“release”,“platform”:“android”,“androidPackageType”:“bundle”}

but still got an APK build. Is there anything that needs to be done in addition? Thanks!

Found a problem at our end - give it another try!

Thanks for the quick response, works fine now :grinning:

Hello, I have tried to do that right now but it didn’t change to aab. I used this code:

{

"androidPackageType": "bundle",

"googlePlayTrack": "production",

"platform": "android",

"release": "release"

}

You need update your project to Android 12. Your project is currently on a very old version which does not support aab yet.

See Building for Android 12.