Pre-review checks help you catch potential problems with changes you plan to make to your app, before you send them for review. Some of the problems may be critical and must be fixed before you can send your changes for review.
Overview
You can find pre-review checks on the Publishing overview page, in the "Changes not yet sent for review" section. This section is only visible if you have made changes to your app since it was last sent for review.
Pre-review checks automatically start running whenever you make changes to your app. You can view their status on the Publishing overview page, but should note the following:
- Some of the checks take longer to run than others, so you may see an estimated time until they finish.
- You don’t need to wait for the checks to finish to be able to send your changes for review. You can send changes at any time, and we’ll finish these checks before sending your changes to be reviewed.
Issues will be visible as soon as they are discovered. Click View issues to learn about each issue.
Learn more about our app review process at Google Play Academy.
View an example screen capture of pre-review checks
Managing detected issues
We check for a variety of different issues. We provide information on each issue, along with links to help you fix them or learn more about the relevant subject. You can fix many issues directly in Play Console, while others might require technical changes to your app, which may require you to build and upload a new app version. You might also need to make changes outside of Play Console, to your developer website, for example.
Some issues must be fixed before you can proceed. Others can be deferred by selecting Proceed anyway. To proceed with known issues, you may be asked to disclose why by selecting one or more reasons, for example, "I already have plans to resolve this issue" or "This issue is incorrect." This information will be logged in the Activity log, and we will use your response to help improve the reliability of our checks. Other times, you may be asked to confirm that you have fixed something outside of Play Console before you can proceed.
Your response won't directly affect your app review outcome, but if the issue makes your app non-functional, it might be rejected during review for failing to comply with Google Play's policies relating to app quality (such as the Minimum Functionality policy). Other issues still present during the review, are also likely to result in a rejection during the review.
If you proceed anyway without subsequently fixing detected issues, they may reappear in the future.
View an example screen capture of a detected issue
Required permissions to proceed with issues
Only users with one of the following permissions can proceed with known issues:
- Release to production, exclude devices and use Play app signing
- Release apps to testing tracks
- Manage testing tracks and edit tester lists
- Manage store presence
- Admin (all permissions)
These are the same permissions used for other features on the Publishing overview page, including managed publishing, so you shouldn’t need to change your currently assigned user permissions.
Frequently asked questions
Why are you introducing these new checks?We want to provide you with early feedback on any critical issues with your planned changes to ensure your app works great for your users. They also help you avoid common mistakes that can result in your changes being rejected during review.
We’ve always run checks to ensure that apps comply with our Developer Program Policy, and that they perform well on user devices. We’re now surfacing a number of these upfront in Play Console, along with some newer quality checks, such as app compatibility issues on newer versions of Android, to save you time.
No. These checks run before your app is in the review process
We run a variety of pre-review checks across your app. Some examples of checks include ensuring your updates contain all mandatory declarations within the App content page (Policy and programs > App content), and detecting high crash rates on certain devices or versions of Android.
All checks take no longer than 15 minutes to return but are usually much shorter. You can select Send for review while the checks are still running and we haven’t found any issues yet. We’ll finish running the checks and automatically send your changes for review if we don’t find any issues.
Currently, most of these checks run only on the Play Console website, with a subset running over the API. Checks that return almost immediately will run over the API, while longer-running checks will not.
No, some checks are required for publishing on Google Play before you can proceed. Examples include missing app content declarations and other information about your app. Some issues are also checked during the review process, so if the issue still persists, your app is likely to be rejected.
We use these responses to help us understand if we got something right or wrong to improve the reliability of our checks, and to understand your perception of these checks. Your response won't directly affect your app review outcome, but if the issue makes your app non-functional, it might be rejected for failing to comply with Google Play's policies relating to app quality (such as the Minimum Functionality policy). Other issues, if still present during the review, are also likely to result in a rejection during the review.
Yes, it is possible to pass all pre-review checks and still fail the app review process, which is more comprehensive than the pre-review checks we surface directly in Play Console.
The checks will continue to run, and your changes will be sent for review automatically once they're complete, as long as no critical issues were detected.
We strive for accuracy, but some issues might be incorrect due to their technical nature. You can proceed in these instances and select an appropriate reason to give us feedback.
Related content
- Learn more about launching your app or game at Google Play Academy.
- Discover how to control when app changes are published with managed publishing.
- Get more information on how to update or unpublish an app.