androidgoogle-playandroid-manifestgoogle-advertising-id

You can't submit updates as some information about your app is incomplete (Google Play)

I cannot update my app in Google Play since it says:

This release includes the com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID permission but your declaration on Play Console says your app doesn't use advertising ID.

You must update your advertising ID declaration.

The app not using ads.

The library which is injecting the permission is -> jetified-play-services-ads-identifier-18.0.0, but I don't know where it is coming from. Also to be sure that this permission is deleted, I added in my app manifest:

<uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID" tools:node="remove" />

But it is still saying that my app cannot be updated because it contains that permission. I have checked the manifest via APK analyzer just to be sure, and it doesn't have the permission in the manifest file(I don't know why it is still saying that the permission is there)...

I updated the "Does your app use advertising ID?" setting on the Play Console to "No", but the same thing is still happening.

I eventually found where these permissions are coming from and disabled those modules:

implementation ("com.google.firebase:firebase-analytics-ktx:21.1.0") {
        exclude module: "play-services-ads-identifier"
        exclude module: "play-services-measurement"
        exclude module: "play-services-measurement-sdk"
        exclude module: "play-services-measurement-api"
    }

After that change, the merged manifest no longer contains that permission (also tested via APK Analyzer), but unfortunately Google Play still says that the app contains the permissions.

Solution

  • After contacting Google Play support they replied and said that if you use analytics we need to choose YES on The AD_ID permission for an analytics use case on the Advertising ID section.

    You should not remove permission manually or remove analytics sub-modules that contain AD_ID permission since it can break things...

    So just need to choose YES even if the app is not using Ads. enter image description here

    Then, you have to send changes to review to get them accepted before upload the app again: enter image description here