I had published an app on Google Play. According to me I need to change the versioncode in the gradle file everytime I upload the new APK and from there, Google Play does the job of notifying the users about an available update. I am in touch with many real world users who say they never got a notification about app update despite the several updates I had published to the original app. I know that there are certain device level play-store settings such as "Update app only on wi-fi" etc. and I've verified all such combinations of scenarios. I still believe that all the users are not notified about the new version available. So my questions are
1) Am I missing anything in the first place?
2) What are my options to make sure the user gets notified about the available update?
When you publish you app it takes some time(may be hours) to update world wide. So User's will not get immediately notified as soon as you publish.
It will also depend on the settings of playstore in user's phone and also the network user is using(i.e. wifi or data).
I have also faced this issue. When I checked for updated version, I did't get it but when I cleared data of playstore from my application settings and force stopped app and then reopened it and I was able to see the updated version.
So from your side you are not doing anything wrong. It's job of playstore plateform.
Only the thing which sometimes happens with the developers is that we continuously use our device to run app by using USB debugging and then we publish our app to playstore. And then we wait for update notification but we will not get notified as the versions in our device and on playstore are same.
