“Imagine how awesome it would be to access apps even without installing them. Well, you can! You can do it just with Google play instant. In this blog, we provide the 10 easy steps to create Android Instant Apps.”
The new addition to Google’s technology “Android Instant Apps” revolutionized the mobile app industry. This technology lets users run apps on android devices even without installing them, which means it doesn’t require any resources or internal storage to run an app. Instant apps opened through web links and allow you to view the application before downloading. By this, you will get an idea of whether this app is what you are looking for or not.
10 Easy Steps to Create Android Instant Apps
Here’s a “step-by-step” guide for creating an Android instant app.
1. Know the Requirements
You must need to know the requirements to create an instant android app.
- Your Android application must have all the necessary features working on mobile devices.
- Your source code should be available for the developer who wants to work on it, even if its final destination is not the mobile device where it will be used.
2. Create an Instant App Module
Creating an app module is the first thing. Follow the following steps to do this:
- Go to the “main menu” of Android Studio
- Select file >New > New Module> Modul type (select “Instant app” as module type)
- Click Next
- Check if your sources are included in the instant app module
- select Finish
3. Decide on a Minimum SDK
Every instant app module will specify the minimum supported Android version that the project requires to function. In regular Android applications, you can select any minimum compatible versions for your app, while in Instant Apps, Google suggests keeping the earliest versions of your instant app on Google Play. This is because from now on, the majority of your application’s modules will be able to function offline.
4. Customized Your Instant App Module Dependencies
This is the step where Android Studio will ask you, whether you want to add new dependencies to your project or not. We will recommend you answer “yes”. Adding dependencies in the instant android app module is one of the methods to make your app available on Google play.
5. Configure Your Default Activity
After setting up the requirements for your instant app, you will see that Android Studio has added a new layout called activity_main to the instant app module’s “res/layout” folder (notice how this layout utilizes the “ComplexAppTheme” theme). This layout represents the activity that will begin when a user launches your instant app. To start your default activity, in this all you need to do is add a button to this layout.
6. Configure the Dependencies for Your Base Module
As you may already know from Google’s docs on the subject, for the Instant Apps feature to work, it needs to be able to access all of your app’s features. To accomplish this, you must tell the Google Play Store that when a user wants to use your Instant App, they are also interested to use your base module. You can do this by adding the dependency of your instant app on your base module to your AndroidManifest.xml file. You should be aware that this step must be completed if you want your instant android app to function properly on the Google Play Store.
7. Test Your Instant App
After configuring the base module dependencies, now is the time to test your instant app by building the project. Go to Menu > Build> Rebuild project. After that select the built variant (menu: Build > Select Build Variant). This same build variant menu can be used to switch between normal APKs and instant apps.
8. Configure Your Instant App’s Metadata
You must add metadata to your instant android app before uploading it to the Google Play Store. The “Instant App Configuration” file, located in the instant app module’s “app” subdirectory and is used to accomplish this. If your application has various configurations, be aware that this configuration file will be copied into every APK that is generated for your instant app module.
To configure metadata for your instant app, open your project-level build.gradle file and include the following snippet:
apply plugin: ‘com.android.instantapp’
9. Test Your Instant App on a Device or Emulator
You must now test your instant app on an android smartphone or emulator to check that everything is functioning properly. To do this, you just need to install the app on the play store of a test device or emulator. After completing this, simply open the Google play store and search for your instant app to see all the apps that are ready to install.
10. Launch Your Instant App on Google Play Store
To publish your instant app on the Google Play Store you must build a new release in the Developer Console (menu: “Release Management > Instant Apps”.
After completing this step, go back to Android Studio and add the “Discovery Badge” and “Deep Link URL” to your project-level build. gradle file, just like it is described here. . Keep in mind that the “Deep Link URL” value must point to the instant app’s default activity.
After your new release instant app is published on the Google play store, you might want to test this app locally before uploading it to production. To achieve this, you must download the APK associated with your “app release” and then test your installation.
Wrapping up
As you can see, once you know how to do it, developing an instant android app is not a difficult task. Hope this blog has helped you to get started with Google Play Store’s Instant Apps feature.
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