Google Play Store — Update your Target SDK level to 33 by August 31, 2023 (Android)
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After a long and tedious process of consulting documentations, ChatGPT, and Google search, I finally found the solution to the issue from Google Play Store.
Violation Message
Here is the message that I received from the Google Play Store team, explaining the violation.
Why It becomes quite confusing?
In my case, the issue was not related to the Target SDK level, as I had already set it to 33 in my react Native App. This is how I specified the Target SDK level in 33 in my app android/build.gradle file.
So, I was puzzled by the request to provide a release using Target SDK level 33 🤔
Solution
Let me show you the solution without wasting too much time.
From the message, I learned that these 2 releases were not compliant with the rule.
Remember this, violation can occur for any active OLD Production/ Test track you have. So, for my case it was for 2 types of Test Track
- Opened Test Track
- Closed Test Track
If you just PAUSE all the OLD production/ test tracks, then the violation will not be resolved ❌.
So, what you should do is to “Create New Release” for each OLD Track with Target SDK version 33 ✅.
Follow 4 steps that I followed
- I created a new Bundle RELEASE of AAB file with Target SDK 33
- Then I identified which releases got violated
- Then I went inside each release & clicked the button on top right side “Create New Release”
- Do the flow to create release & upload AAB.
🚩 I created a new Bundle RELEASE of AAB file with Target SDK 33
Since my issue was related to the Opened & Closed Test track, I generated a TEST bundle release (AAB file) using my staging server.
🚩 Then I identified which releases got violated
For my case these were releases
- Opened Test Track: 3237113 (2.0.2)
- Closed Test Track: 3237107 (2.0.2)
🚩 Then I went inside each release & clicked the button on top right side “Create New Release”
You will find a button like bellow on top right side. Just click it & do the normal flow to create a new release.
🚩 Do the flow to create release & upload AAB
Create a new release as usual, but make sure to upload the new AAB bundle that has Target SDK version 33, or you can use any previous BUNDLE release with 33 from Library like this 👇
🚩 Do these 4 steps of above for each violated release.
What Next
When you are done, submit all new releases for review from “Publishing Overview”.
It may take a few hours (for me it was only 1 hour) to complete the review. After the review was successful, I saw that the violation was resolved from Policy Warning Status 👇
That’s all. Great you have solved the violation 🚀.
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