This article was published on March 29, 2012

Never share a password again, Android Developer Console gets multi-user access


Never share a password again, Android Developer Console gets multi-user access

Here’s a scenario that most iOS and Android developers can understand: The dev center that Apple and Google gives you to administrate your apps contains some great information, like stats and such. The only problem is that you only get one login and password to access all of that information.

That’s right, even if you have five developers who can upload a build of your app or make changes on the App Store or Google Play, everyone has to log in with the same credentials. That’s pretty broken, but luckily Google has fixed that today by announcing multi-user access for its Android Developer Console.

It’s about time, huh? Since Google already has people using Google Accounts for pretty much everything, it’s a shock that it took them this long to take care of the developer access.

Here’s what the Android team had to say about it today:

As your apps have gotten more successful, more people have joined your team. Today, we’re making it easier to work together on analyzing and managing your published Android apps. Sharing passwords is generally a bad idea; so as of now, there’s no need to do that for the Android Developer Console — everyone can use his or her own Google account.

The account that you use today to sign into the Android Developer Console will become the account owner; only the account owner can manage access to the Console. The account owner can email an invitation to anyone; when they accept it, they’ll need to use a Google account to sign in.

This is similar to how multiple users can access Google Analytics, and you’ll even be able to choose who can access what in the console. For example, if someone at your company needs to look at your sales for financial purposes, you’ll be able to restrict their access just to that section. How Apple hasn’t fixed yet is beyond me, but considering that you can only have so many test devices on one account (which still boggles my mind), I shouldn’t be that surprised.

No longer do you have to worry about someone accidentally changing the price of your app, or gosh forbid removing it from Google Play entirely. Hey Apple, where’s this feature for iOS developers?

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