Now only if Google updated the release notes of its apps
App updates are no longer as interesting as before. The best Android apps nowadays rarely receive significant new features, with updates only being about bug fixes and background changes. But this does not mean changelogs are not important. They still provide useful insight into the small but useful additions the app developer has introduced. At the beginning of 2023 though, Google removed app changelogs from the Play Store on the web. Thankfully, a Play Store team member inside the company confirmed this was an unintentional move, and app changelogs should be back soon on the web.
Now, just a week later, the What’s New section is once again live for Play Store on the web. To be clear, the section had only gone missing from the web, with the Play Store mobile app still displaying the latest release notes of an app.
App release notes are useful as they help determine if an app is still being actively developed or not. Admittedly, app developers are no longer actively updating their app changelogs on the Play Store like before. The big G continues to use three-year-old release notes for the Google app, and it no longer regularly updates the What’s New section for many of its other apps.
If you use the app store’s web interface to install new apps or keep track of app updates and changes, you can go back to doing it again. That is until Google again accidentally removes the changelog section from the Play Store, as it did previously in March 2022. It was only after user backlash and media reports that the company backtracked on its decision. This time too, it is possible that the company reinstated changelogs on the Play Store for the web following media reports.
