How I Published my First Mobile App to the Google App Store
Streamline Your Family Life: Track, Organise, Connect!
Hey there!
I have finally published the first version of the app onto the Google play store.
Link to Tangyuan app here!
In this article, I would like to share a personal journey of how I went from ground zero to publishing Tangyuan app on the google play store.
Come up with a problem space to tackle
The first step I did was to think of the problem that I wanted to work on.
I wanted to narrow down on a space that was close to my personal life and eventually settled on the idea of creating an app for my family and i to use. Perhaps it’s largely because I have been spending a lot of time at home and this is an area which I am the most familiar with.
My family mostly communicate via messaging chats apps and our chat is often inundated with numerous messages, photos, instructions from my mother, status updates from my siblings, and even the sharing of passwords, among other things. It’s not the best experience to go through when I need to search for something.
I thought that there must be a better way to sort all of these information. In my opinion, the app had to be something that families could use as an organiser and at the same time, also be fun! And thus, I came up with an idea of creating a mobile app to do exactly this!
Name the app, draw out the UI and think of the MVP features
The next step I did was to think of what I should name my app, how my app would look like and what were some of the basic features I wanted to create.
I decided to name my app after the traditional Chinese dessert, Tangyuan 汤圆.
Tangyuan is made of glutinous rice flour filled with sweet or savoury fillings and usually served in a sweet syrup. Due to it’s round shape appearance and name, which sounds like “tuanyuan” (团圆), meaning “reunion” or “togetherness” in Chinese, it is normally consumed by Chinese during important occasions such as the Lantern Festival or Winter Solstice.
I thought that it was the perfect representation of what I wanted my app to represent, which is family unity.
Then, I used Canva to draw my app logo.
Following that, I used Lucid chart to do product features brainstorming, created a brief timeline and drew some simple mobile UIs which I would later on refer to when I was coding.
Decide on the tech stack!
Based on the features requirements, the next step was to figure out how I was going to create the product.
What technologies am I going to adopt? What database? Which language? Which framework?
For Tangyuan app, I chose to use Google Firebase. Firebase has a suite of tools that can cater to almost all of my app’s needs such as database storage, app notification, authentication and analytics. I like that Firebase provides an all-in-one-console solution and it’s very convenient and easy to integrate with.
I chose to use React Native as my development framework as I was already familar with ReactJS and it was easy to get onboarded. For fast and easy development, I integrated my React Native project with Expo which enabled me to test my code and run my app on mobile emulators — both android and ios.
As I wanted to ensure the security of the credentials used in my mobile application, I later expanded to creating a backend Express NodeJs application. The main responsibility of the backend project is to store important credentials and handle some queries from the mobile app.
I also use EAS Build which is a free service (with quotas) for generating app binaries (.aab and .apk). All I had to do was to create an eas account, then ran some commands and EAS would help me to generate .APK files which could be downloaded directly on Android mobile phone for use (before I published it to the App store).
When I later published my app, I used EAS again to generate the release bundle (.AAB) which I then uploaded to the google play store.
I used Vercel which is a free Web hosting service to host my backend project. It was a really easy and fuss free process. I basically connected Vercel to the github repository which stored my project code. Each time i pushed my code changes to the master branch of my github repository, it would trigger an automatic deployment on Vercel and my backend service would be up and running within minutes.
The entire journey of figuring out which technology to adopt for my project was more of a “feeling for the stones while crossing the river” process. I didn’t start the project knowing exactly which technology I would be using for every single aspect of my project. Along the way, I browsed through a lot of internet articles and consulted Chat GPT for help.
Start coding!
To make sure that I remained committed to my goals for Tangyuan app, I set aside time in my calendar. It also helped that I was pretty free in the first month that I started working on the Tangyuan app as I was between jobs. Later on, when I started my new job, it turned out to be pretty chill and I just worked on my project on the days that I was “more free” and worked from home.
More about the features I have developed so far ….
It’s an FREE app targeted at helping families to connect, organise and manage their daily activities.
The app provides a separate space for individuals to communicate with their family members, keep track of their family members’ schedules, create to-do lists, leave notes and send status updates (with app notifications).
Here are a few screenshots I have taken of my App.
That’s all? What a boring app!
Of course not!
Currently, the app is still in the early stages of development. What you are seeing now is just the basic bare minimum viable product. I have upcoming plans to develop more features, involving AI and support for photos uploads, to make it a fun and more useful app for families.
App Release
Once I was satisfied with what I had (aka my MVP), the next step was to release the app into an app store to distribute it so that people can find Tangyuan app and download it!
A mobile app can either be used in an ios or android device or both.
At present, I have only made a release onto google play store which means it is only available for android phones.
The process entailed
creating an account and paying the 29 USD one-time fee
waiting for my developer’s account to be verified
filling up some forms regarding the app (eg, how the data will be used)
creating a private policy for my app (I basically just went online to generate a privacy policy and then copied the html content into my wordpress website here) and submitted it
uploading my app release bundle (.aab) for google to verify and publish my app
The reason why I only released an android app is because of the hefty Apple store developer fee, where I have to pay a 99 USD annual fee. I think that it is currently beyond my financial means especially since my app has yet to gain a sizeable user base =( But I definitely will consider it in the future if more and more people start using my app =)
Support me, download my app here!
I also recognise that within a single family, individuals may use different phone models, including iPhones and not exclusively Android devices. Therefore, I am also working to develop a web version of the application.
Stay tuned :)
Get Users!
In my opinion, this is going to be the hardest step of all. Scaling a product and increasing user base is an incredibly difficult thing to do especially when I am a nobody and … I am still figuring out how to do this.
I previously read some online post that Product Hunt is a useful tool in introducing your software product to the world. Many startups got their start there. Hence…I also created a launch page a couple of days before I released my app onto the google store. Here is my app’s launch page profile.
As you can probably see….the response has not been great. Well, actually there is no response because i am the only person on the internet commenting on my post 😭.
I would be grateful to hear any advice anyone can offer me to scale my app 🙏
If you want to support me =)
- download the app
- use it with your family
- spread the word if you like it
Remember, the app is still a MVP with many more work to be done. If you hate the app on first glance, don’t delete it! Leave a feedback, email me at tangyuan.app@gmail.com and tell me how I can improve it =) I will definitely reply you and work to improve the app.
Links: