Forum Discussion
Solved
Hide an app in the private Google play store
Hello,
I have a client who would like to deploy applications while hiding them directly from the Google Play Store.
The customer is on the EMM solution "Ivanti Neurons for MDM (formerly MobileIron Cloud)
Ivanti has made an option available to hide applications but this only allows applications to be hidden on Ivanti's own application store (and not on the Google Play Store).
Do you know if there is an option outside of the EMM console (e.g. via play.google.com/work) to deploy an app to a user but while hiding it on the client's private Google Play Store ?
The particular use case doesn't make sense to me but if I was trying to achieve this goal I would likely leverage some form of kiosk mode and then block the end user access to Google Play completely.
Fully agree and just to add this: That's not possible to hide public apps.
I also see no reason why this should be done.
I am not sure about the capabilities of Neurons but some custom DPC based EMMs like SOTI MobiControl, 42Gears, and, WS1 allow you to install APKs directly on the devices without involving Google Play at all. That would certainly solve this particular problem.
Hello,
Thank you for your feedback.
I think you are talking about being able to import an application in Application In House mode:
In fact, this functionality allows the application to be deployed silently and with the “hide the app” option.
However, this feature is only for private applications and for versioning.
My customer would like to be able to deploy a public app (like Adobe acrobat reader for example) and make it hidden on the Google Play Store
The particular use case doesn't make sense to me but if I was trying to achieve this goal I would likely leverage some form of kiosk mode and then block the end user access to Google Play completely.
Hello,
Thank you very much for your feedback.
I conclude that it is not possible to hide applications on the Google Play Store, except by directly hiding the package name of the Google Play Store application.
I will provide this feedback to the customer
As said, you can do this only with sideloading (ideally by EMM) and/or not granting access to playstore by using a kiosk screen.
