Google requires SDK 28 starting Nov 1st 2019

[planckdensity]

Below is from an email I just received from Google Play. Current meteor 1.8.1 is Android 27 … Does meteor provide ability to use Android 28 yet ? Looks like Google will block app updates unless SDK is at least 28

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/113469#targetsdk

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This is a reminder that starting November 1, 2019 , updates to apps and games on Google Play will be [required to target Android 9 (API level 28) or higher] After this date, the Play Console will prevent you from submitting new APKs with a targetSdkVersion less than 28.

Configuring your app to target a recent API level ensures that users benefit from significant security and performance improvements, while still allowing your app to run on older Android versions (down to the minSdkVersion).

Action required

Please ensure that your apps are configured to target at least Android 9 (API level 28) by November 1, 2019 .

[wildhart]

See here:

Meteor Cordova and Play Store

Play Store has set their Android API level requirement to 28 for new apps and starting from 1 November 2019 for updates as well (link). Meteor’s Cordova integration uses cordova-android 7.1.4 (changelog), which according to cordova docs supports only API levels 19 - 27 (link). Does this mean that if I were to start a new Meteor Cordova project now, I would likely be unable to add it to Play Store? From a recent github post Ben does not seem very enthusiastic about keeping up with Cordova update…

[brianmulhall]

you can see in commit 5e26ebb6a9d68cea176869ac3a83121dcee7e925 in the meteor repo the last time cordova-android and cordova-ios was updated the changes that were made, I kind of want to play around with my local repo of Meteor and see if bumping that up to the lastest and fixing any issues caused by that would get a apk file building for version 28 of the Android OS

[rjdavid]

mobile-config.js

App.setPreference('android-minSdkVersion', '22');
App.setPreference('android-targetSdkVersion', '28');

[rabidale]

Hey if you are not using a mobile-config.js file in your Meteor application and are running into this issue, check out your AndroidManifest.xml file in android>app>src>main

In there you need to add the following snippet: android:usesCleartextTraffic="true" inside of the <application tag of the file. Without going too much into it, Google/Android is cracking down on ClearText traffic, and in the SDK 28 release, they set this default to false. If you are currently using ClearText traffic in your application, you may want to consider moving towards HTTPS/WSS in the future.

Hope this helps!

[bartoftutormundi]

Thank you rabidale, this solved an issue for me!