Android Question Meaningless change

[Brian Dean]

I have published only a handful of apps on the Playstore. One of these relates to a very specialist topic, has around 80 current users and has never had more than 150. It retrieves data from a website (not mine) and displays it in a readable form with some sorting and searching tools. I published it eight, maybe more, years ago.

Google has emailed me saying "Play Console developer accounts are intended for developers who actively publish and maintain apps." If I don't "update" my app inside the next six weeks my developer account will be removed. I dealt with this problem last year simply by changing the sdk level to 34 - the change was accepted and published in less that 15 minutes!

Has anyone else been in this position? Can anyone suggest a totally risk-free 'update' that might get me out of this situation?

 

[emexes]

Add a new app?

Or are all apps supposed to be updated regularly?

Perhaps a clock pendulum weight calculator. Something that's useful and not already in Play Store. Esoteric topic means hard to prove correct or incorrect, so reviewer will have to (or should) regard app as being correct.

 

[emexes]

Or update the copyright notice?

Or add/edit a help page?

 

[ema01]

Has anyone else been in this position?

Yes.
Besides the fact that you are forced to udpate the minimum/target sdk version now, they really don't want you to make things that work.
Just open the project, update the version number, release. Problem solved.

 

[Brian Dean]

Just open the project, update the version number, release.

Okay - I will definitely give that a try.