gpc enterprise

Publish private apps to Managed Google Play via the Play Custom App Publishing API. Private apps are distributed exclusively to specific enterprise customers and never appear on the public Play Store.

Permanently private

Apps created through this API are permanently private and cannot be converted to public apps later. The GPC CLI prints a confirmation prompt before running create or publish to make sure you meant it. Pass --yes to skip the prompt in CI.

Synopsis

gpc enterprise --account <developer-account-id> <subcommand>

--account is required. It is the developer account ID — a long integer you read from your Play Console URL:

https://play.google.com/console/developers/[ACCOUNT_ID]
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^
                                             this number

It is not a Google Workspace organization ID, nor a Cloud Identity organization ID.

Subcommands

enterprise publish <bundle>

One-shot publish. Creates a new private custom app, uploads the bundle, and returns the assigned package name.

gpc enterprise --account 1234567890 publish ./app.aab \
  --title "My Internal App" \
  --lang en_US \
  --org-id org-acme-corp

gpc enterprise --account 1234567890 publish ./app.aab \
  --title "My Internal App" \
  --org-id org-acme --org-name "Acme Corp" \
  --org-id org-beta --org-name "Beta Inc" \
  --yes                               # skip confirmation prompt (CI)

Positional:

Argument	Description
<bundle>	Path to the AAB or APK to upload.

Options:

Option	Description
--title <title>	App title (required).
--lang <code>	Default listing language in BCP 47 format. Default: en_US.
--org-id <id>	Target enterprise organization ID. Repeatable — use the flag once per organization.
--org-name <name>	Optional human-readable organization name. Repeatable, matched by position with --org-id.

enterprise create

Explicit-arg version of publish. Functionally equivalent — publish is the shorter form with a positional bundle path.

gpc enterprise --account 1234567890 create \
  --title "My Internal App" \
  --bundle ./app.aab \
  --org-id org-acme-corp

Options:

Option	Description
--title <title>	App title (required).
--bundle <path>	Path to AAB or APK (required).
--lang <code>	Default listing language. Default: en_US.
--org-id <id>	Target organization ID (repeatable).
--org-name <name>	Human-readable organization name (repeatable, matched by position).

enterprise list

Removed in v0.9.56. Google's Play Custom App Publishing API exposes no list method — private apps created via this API appear in your regular developer account alongside public apps. Use gpc apps list to find them.

Required setup

Before running gpc enterprise, you need four things:

1. A Google Play developer account — the one whose ID you'll pass as --account.
2. A Google Cloud project with the Play Custom App Publishing API enabled. Enable it at console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/playcustomapp.googleapis.com.
3. A service account with a JSON key configured via gpc auth or GPC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY.
4. The "create and publish private apps" permission granted to your service account in Play Console → Users and permissions → select the service account → Account permissions.

Running gpc doctor probes the Play Custom App API and flags missing permissions. See the Enterprise publishing guide for step-by-step setup.

Updating a private app

Once a private app is created, it becomes a regular app in your developer account. Subsequent version uploads, track management, listing updates, rollouts, and everything else happen through the standard GPC commands against the packageName returned by gpc enterprise publish:

# v1 of com.google.customapp.xyz already exists via `gpc enterprise publish`
# Ship v2 like any other release:
gpc --app com.google.customapp.xyz releases upload ./app-v2.aab --track production --rollout 0.10

Adding organizations later

--org-id at create time is the only way to associate enterprise organizations with a private app via the API. If you need to add or remove organizations after creation, you must use the Play Console UI — there is no API for this.

Output

On success:

{
  "packageName": "com.google.customapp.A1B2C3D4E5",
  "title": "My Internal App",
  "languageCode": "en_US",
  "organizations": [{ "organizationId": "org-acme-corp" }]
}

The packageName is assigned by Google and starts with com.google.customapp. — you cannot influence it.

Deprecated flag

Flag	Status	Replacement
--org	Deprecated in v0.9.56, removed in a future version.	Use --account instead.

--org still works in v0.9.56 but prints a warning on every use. The name was historically misleading — it was always a developer account ID, never an organization ID.

See also

• Publishing to Managed Google Play from CI/CD — full walkthrough
• Android Enterprise overview — product context
• Play Custom App Publishing API reference — Google's upstream docs