Google Play Store warning doesn’t go away

I spent three days dealing with a Google Play Store warning. This is what I did for them not to remove my app from the store.

Photo by Obi - @pixel8propix on Unsplash

Background

I got the following warning from Google suddenly.

It was pretty scary because it said the Google team would remove my app from the store. It said my login information was invalid and I had two weeks to fix it. However, I didn’t change anything on the login credentials and the way to log in.

I had had similar warnings before and all of them were addressed without any updates. So I left it alone for a week and would see what was going on. But nothing changed and the terrifying countdown started.

What I did

First of all, I sent a message to the Google review team to appeal that the login credentials are valid. There is a form to appeal your statement in the email in which they informed you of the warning. The following link is the form.

Request information about a warning from Google Play

Then I received the following message from the Google team.

I think I should have done it earlier. Next time I have the same warning, I’ll send the form on the first day.

Then I updated the App access policy and submitted it for review. The review took around 5 minutes and the update was approved by the Google team. However, the warning didn’t go away.

Then I thought I might need to publish a new version so I made a new one and submitted it to review again. The review took a few hours and the new version was approved. So I released it. However, the warning didn’t go away.

I became very worried about my situation. So I did a quick research on the warning. Then I found there were several cases where the warning kept remaining.

Policy violation (Invalid or incomplete login credentials) warning won't go away - Google Play…

Based on the research, I thought it might take a few days for the warning to be removed. So I left it without anything for two days. Then I got the terrifying message on the last day.

I thought the review wasn’t going well. I did the following things.

1. Implement the feature to track review login
2. Update App access policy
3. Make another new version
4. Submit both changes to review
5. Release the changes
6. Send a reply message to the Google review team

Regarding the 1st step, I implemented a simple and small feature to track login by the test account which I provided to the Google team. When they success to log in with the test account, the system sends a message to Slack so that I can see the review goes well.

Regarding the 2nd to 5th steps, I did the same things as I did two days ago.

Regarding the 6th step, I replied to the message that I received after sending the form. In the reply, I appealed that my credentials were valid and wrote the login instructions as well.

The next day, I didn’t see any logins by the test account on Slack. But my app was still available on the console and store. The warning was like below.

The Google team doesn’t seem to remove the app immediately after the deadline. I think they do review again before removing. Then I saw the login message on Slack during the day. I felt relieved at this moment to know they had succeeded in logging in. Then the last warning kept remaining till the next day and went away finally.

It took whole three days to address the warning and I kept worried about this warning for whole a week. It was very tiring mentally rather than physically.

That’s it!