Hey all, we are in the process of publishing a TV-only game, however when published on Google Play it lists nearly 12,000 supported devices. Is there a way to exclude all mobile devices and only support TV? Obviously manually excluding each is not feasible…
Hmmm… this isn’t something Google promotes since they want apps to be universal amongst all Android devices.
Try adding the following to your “build.settings” file. See if this work.
(I’ve never done this before. So, this is a complete guess.)
settings = { android = { usesFeatures = { { name = "android.hardware.type.television", required = true }, }, }, }
And I’m pretty sure the above would only work for an “Android TV” device. And not a TV device that was created before Google’s official Android TV support, such as the Ouya or original Amazon Fire TV (they’re non-standard Android TV devices).
Yes that seemed to do the trick, down to 133 supported devices now which all are for TV. So should this line be commented out when building for Amazon?
Great! Happy to help!
>> So should this line be commented out when building for Amazon?
Good question. The 1st generation of Amazon’s “Fire TV” and “Fire TV Stick” are Android 4.x devices which came before Google’s Android TV standard. Google’s Android TV support is a 5.0 feature. So, those devices will likely not be able to download your app unless the user upgrades their device to Android 5.0, which I believe Amazon offers for free. Amazon documents the Fire TV update here…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201497590
So, I’m thinking you do not need to comment out that “uses-feature” line for Amazon builds.
I believe the current Fire OS is 5.0.5.1 and all Fire TVs should be running this as they update automatically.
Hmmm… this isn’t something Google promotes since they want apps to be universal amongst all Android devices.
Try adding the following to your “build.settings” file. See if this work.
(I’ve never done this before. So, this is a complete guess.)
settings = { android = { usesFeatures = { { name = "android.hardware.type.television", required = true }, }, }, }
And I’m pretty sure the above would only work for an “Android TV” device. And not a TV device that was created before Google’s official Android TV support, such as the Ouya or original Amazon Fire TV (they’re non-standard Android TV devices).
Yes that seemed to do the trick, down to 133 supported devices now which all are for TV. So should this line be commented out when building for Amazon?
Great! Happy to help!
>> So should this line be commented out when building for Amazon?
Good question. The 1st generation of Amazon’s “Fire TV” and “Fire TV Stick” are Android 4.x devices which came before Google’s Android TV standard. Google’s Android TV support is a 5.0 feature. So, those devices will likely not be able to download your app unless the user upgrades their device to Android 5.0, which I believe Amazon offers for free. Amazon documents the Fire TV update here…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201497590
So, I’m thinking you do not need to comment out that “uses-feature” line for Amazon builds.
I believe the current Fire OS is 5.0.5.1 and all Fire TVs should be running this as they update automatically.