Configure the base module

An app bundle is different from an APK in that you can’t deploy one to a device. Rather, it’s a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources in a single build artifact. So, after you upload your signed app bundle, Google Play has everything it needs to build and sign your app’s APKs, and serve them to users.

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Most app projects won’t require much effort to support Android App Bundles. That’s because the module that includes code and resources for your app’s base APK is the standard app module, which you get by default when you create a new app project in Android Studio. That is, the module that applies the application plugin below to its build.gradle file provides the code and resources for the base functionality of your app.

// The standard application plugin creates your app's base module.
plugins {
 id 'com.android.application'
}

plugins {
    // The standard application plugin creates your app's base module.
    id("com.android.application")
}

In addition to providing the core functionality for your app, the base module also provides many of the build configurations and manifest entries that affect your entire app project.

The base module build configuration

For most existing app projects, you don’t need to change anything in your base module’s build configuration. However, if you are considering adding feature modules to your app project or if you previously released your app using multiple APKs, there are some aspects to the base module’s build configuration that you should keep in mind.

Version code and app updates

With Android App Bundles, you no longer have to manage version codes for multiple APKs that you upload to Google Play. Instead, you manage only one version code in the base module of your app, as shown below:

// In your base module build.gradle file
android {
    defaultConfig {
        …
        // You specify your app’s version code only in the base module.
        versionCode 5
        versionName "1.0"
    }
}

After you upload your app bundle, Google Play uses the version code in your base module to assign the same version code to all the APKs it generates from that bundle. That is, when a device downloads and installs your app, all split APKs for that app share the same version code.

When you want to update your app with new code or resources, you must update the version code in your app’s base module, and build a new, full app bundle. When you upload that app bundle to Google Play, it generates a new set of APKs based on the version code the base module specifies. Subsequently, when users update your app, Google Play serves them updated versions of all APKs currently installed on the device. That is, all installed APKs are updated to the new version code.

Other considerations

• App signing: If you include signing information in your build files, you should only include it in the base module’s build configuration file. For more information, see Configure Gradle to sign your app.
• Code shrinking: If you want to enable code shrinking for your entire app project (including its feature modules), you must do so from the base module’s build.gradle file. That is, you can include custom ProGuard rules in a feature module, but the minifyEnabled property in feature module build configurations is ignored.
• The splits block is ignored: When building an app bundle, Gradle ignores properties in the android.splits block. If you want to control which types of configuration APKs your app bundle supports, instead use android.bundle to disable types of configuration APKs.
• App versioning: The base module determines the version code and version name for your entire app project. For more information, go to the section about how to Manage app updates.

Re-enable or disable types of configuration APKs

By default, when you build an app bundle, it supports generating configuration APKs for each set of language resources, screen density resources, and ABI libraries. Using the android.bundle block in your base module’s build.gradle file, as shown below, you can disable support for one or more types of configuration APKs:

android {
    // When building Android App Bundles, the splits block is ignored.
    // You can remove it, unless you're going to continue to build multiple
    // APKs in parallel with the app bundle
    splits {...}

    // Instead, use the bundle block to control which types of configuration APKs
    // you want your app bundle to support.
    bundle {
        language {
            // This property is set to true by default.
            // You can specify `false` to turn off
            // generating configuration APKs for language resources.
            // These resources are instead packaged with each base and
            // feature APK.
            // Continue reading below to learn about situations when an app
            // might change setting to `false`, otherwise consider leaving
            // the default on for more optimized downloads.
            enableSplit = false
        }
        density {
            // This property is set to true by default.
            enableSplit = true
        }
        abi {
            // This property is set to true by default.
            enableSplit = true
        }
    }
}

android {
    // When building Android App Bundles, the splits block is ignored.
    // You can remove it, unless you're going to continue to build multiple
    // APKs in parallel with the app bundle
    splits {...}

    // Instead, use the bundle block to control which types of configuration APKs
    // you want your app bundle to support.
    bundle {
        language {
            // This property is set to true by default.
            // You can specify `false` to turn off
            // generating configuration APKs for language resources.
            // These resources are instead packaged with each base and
            // feature APK.
            // Continue reading below to learn about situations when an app
            // might change setting to `false`, otherwise consider leaving
            // the default on for more optimized downloads.
            enableSplit = false
        }
        density {
            // This property is set to true by default.
            enableSplit = true
        }
        abi {
            // This property is set to true by default.
            enableSplit = true
        }
    }
}

Handling language changes

Google Play determines which language resources to install with the app based on the language selection in the user's device settings. Consider a user who changes their default system language after already downloading your app. If your app supports that language, the device requests and downloads additional configuration APKs for those language resources from Google Play.

For apps that offer a language picker inside the application and dynamically change the app's language, independent of the system level language setting, you must make some changes to prevent crashes due to missing resources. Either set the android.bundle.language.enableSplit property to false, or consider implementing on-demand language downloads using the Play Core library as described in Download additional language resources