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Android development is torturous for this. I've been getting emails from Google recently advising me that I need to update my minSdkVersion or my app will no lo

Android development is torturous for this. I've been getting emails from Google recently advising me that I need to update my minSdkVersion or my app will no longer be on the Play Store. So I opened up Android Studio yesterday to upgrade things and hopefully release a quick beta to shake things down. It's now the next day and I'm still weeding through compile-time and runtime errors caused through the upgrade. I feel like every time I update Android libraries my code bloats out with extra conditionals and permissions checks, and generally makes my code more brittle. Maybe this is just the nature of building a secure platform which has such a broad reach. I can't claim to know, but it sure sours the developer experience. As a simple, non-commercial public transport app that I wrote mostly for fun and learning, it's hard to be movitated to fix it.

butz 3y ago
While I understand the general concern of keeping Android app on latest SDK to keep it secure and periodically check, if it still works on recent Android version, I really hate when new policies are introduced. Had to resort to using ChatGPT to generate long privacy policy written in "legalese" to pass. My app updates were blocked until then. Not to mention the fact that my app works fully offline and does not collect any user data. Now users will have a long privacy policy to read that says nothing, at least policy bots are happy. Another concern is possible upcoming requirement to display developers phone number. If that ever happens, that day I'm removing my app from Play Store.