Posted by Yafit Becher, Product Manager and Ray Brusca, Manager Strategic Partnerships
App developers rely on SDKs to integrate key functionality and services for their apps and games. SDKs are essential building blocks, but developers have shared that it can be difficult to figure out which SDKs are reliable and safe to use. So helping developers like you make informed decisions about SDKs is part of keeping Google Play a safe, trusted space for billions of people.
In 2020, we launched Google Play SDK Console to provide SDK providers with crash reporting, usage statistics, and a way to communicate critical issues to app developers through Google Play Console and Android Studio. Today we are taking another step to increase communication and transparency by launching Google Play SDK Indexa new public portal with a list over 100 of the most widely used commercial SDKs and insights about each SDK†
Google Play SDK Index shows confidence and security signals so you can decide if an SDK is right for your business and your users.
You can search for an SDK or view a category, such as Advertising & Monetization or Analytics. For each SDK entry, Google Play SDK Index combines usage data from Google Play apps with SDK code detection to provide engineered insights to help you decide if an SDK is right for your business and your users† You can see:
- What Android app permissions the SDK can request
- If the SDK provider is committed to ensuring that their SDK code complies with Google Play policies
- Version Acceptance Rates
- Retention stats and more
SDK providers may also share important information with you for the SDKs they have registered on the Google Play SDK Console, such as:
- Which SDK version is outdated or has critical issues
- Links to data security guidelines about what data the SDK collects and why, to help you complete your app’s data security form.
Wherever you are in your development lifecycle, we hope you find the Google Play SDK Index helpful in making informed SDK choices. Stay tuned for more updates as we add additional data points, categories and volume SDKs.
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