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This app isn't available for your device because it was made for an older version of Android - Stack Overflow
Is there a way to download an app older version because the new version is not compatible with my de - Google Play Community
How to find all old versions of an app on Google Play Store?
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hello! just to start - i'm very much not a tech person, so i'm sorry if i use the wrong terminology/say something that makes no sense. basically, i've found an older phone that's super cute, but doesn't run a recent version of android (7.1.1 i believe.) this isn't an issue for me as i want to use this as a way to get off ny phone, have less apps, stop scrolling social media etc, but my one issue is my bus company has a bus pass that you HAVE to use the app for, and this app doesn't support anything below android 8. however, this apps been around a long time (since like 2007) so i was wondering if there's a way to download an older version of the app on my "new" old phone. if anyone has any advice/knows if this is at all possible or just a dead end i'd be so grateful if you could let me know. thank you so much !! :)
I found this little gem in a list of notifications in google play developer:
Starting from 1 Nov 2022, apps that don't target an API level within two years of the latest Android release (API 29 and below) won't be available to new users with devices running Android versions newer than your app's target API level. This means that new users won't be able to discover or install your app on Google Play
Wow! That is going to cause a heck of a lot of apps to stop working, and require a lot of development work on apps that are perfectly functional and don't otherwise need updating.
Solution is to update your targetSdkVersion in your app.
And remember to do this every 2 years for all your apps!
(For my build tools I find searching everywhere using Android Studio for 'targetSdkVersion' and updating the numbers from 29 to 31 is the simplest approach, then fixing any resulting build errors, which in this case meant I had to upgrade Android Studio as well due to java version 11 being required for android 31 - refer unrecognized Attribute name MODULE (class com.sun.tools.javac.util.SharedNameTable$NameImpl)).
I ran into a similar error. We had an APK with API 31 in the internal test release section. In the Google Play console and devices with Android 12 and 13, we were presenting that message when trying to download the app:
This app isn't available for your device because it was made for an older version of Android.
The way it was solved is to release this version with API 31 or higher to production. This is because the store has a bug in it, and if you currently have an old APK in production with an API of 29, for example, this will generate an incompatibility with the others APKs that are in the test segments. That is, when launching to production, the new APK deactivates the old version that creates a conflict, and there will no longer be a problem when downloading on the new devices.
If you see this test as risky, you can make a progressive launch of 1% in the production segment.
I want to download all old versions of an app on Google Play Store since 2017. I looked at APKCombo and APKPure, but neither of them has so old versions. It does not exist on APKMirror.
The APK files for old versions don't seem to be available/linked on the main homepage.
However, after doing some research, I found this forum post https://forum.f-droid.org/t/archive-repositories/10556 which contains a list of all archive repositories, including the official F-Droid archive https://f-droid.org/archive.
Using https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/?repo=archive, it is possible to browse said archive and download the APK file that you're looking for. You can verify that the actual download URL begins with https://f-droid.org/archive/.
It is easy to install older versions, just from within the F-Droid app. From the specific page of the desired app on the device, scroll to its bottom, and open the directory node "Versions", revealing previous F-Droid versions.
For example, on the main page just now, "Diary", a personal diary, has a version page with DOZENS of versions, (dated). Knowing the prior release date roughly will lead you to the version you want with an "Install" button.