Play store listing copy

This document is the only copy of the listing text. The Console is where it is pasted, not where it lives — a value that exists only in a web form cannot be reviewed, translated as a set, or recovered when someone edits it by accident.

Three scripts read this file, so its headings are load-bearing:

The gate exists because of a real failure. A release shipped to production carrying the previous version’s release notes: versionName had been bumped and the notes had not, nothing compared the two, and Play does not allow release notes to be edited on a live release. The correction had to wait for the next upload. Renaming a heading is cheaper.

Fields shared across both locales

English (default listing language)

Play counts characters, not words, and rejects at the limit rather than truncating. Keep the count in the heading and update it when you edit: it is the only warning you get before the Console refuses a paste.

App name — 0/30

The app name is not translated, in any locale. app_name is translatable="false" for the same reason, so every listing carries the same name.

Plain Light

Short description — 0/80

The line that appears under the name in search results, and the most-read text in the listing.

Full description — 0/4000

No health or safety claims, here or on any page the listing links to — Play’s enforcement reads a linked page as part of the listing. Say what the app cannot do instead.

The shape the apps built from this template converged on, with headings in capitals because Play renders no markup. The block below is what play-metadata.py uploads, so the outline stays out of it:

1. One or two sentences: the problem, and what the app does about it.
2. HOW IT WORKS — what happens, in the order the user meets it.
3. FREE, AND NOTHING LEAVES YOUR PHONE — no ads, no account, no server; “it does not request the internet permission” only while aab-permissions.py forbids INTERNET; what it stores.
4. WHAT IT CANNOT DO — the honest limits, and what a phone or the platform can stop.
5. PERMISSIONS — one line each, in the user’s words.
6. A last line pointing at the source: github.com/maks-sredniawa/plain-light-control.

Polish

App name — 0/30

Plain Light

Short description — 0/80

Full description — 0/4000

Release notes (Play’s “What’s new”, 500 chars per locale)

Don’t paste these by hand. The Console takes all languages in one textarea, tagged by locale, and scripts/play-whatsnew.py renders exactly that from the blocks below:

python3 scripts/play-whatsnew.py                 # newest version here, to stdout
python3 scripts/play-whatsnew.py --version 0.1.0 # a named one

It reformats and never retypes, so this document stays the only copy. It exits non-zero if a note is over 500 characters, or if a language the app ships has no note at all — both of which Play accepts in silence and a user then reads.

The label above each block is parsed, not decorative: **<Language>** — <n>/500: on a line of its own, with the fenced note under it. The count is what keeps a note from reaching Play truncated, and play-whatsnew.py refuses a language the app ships and this section does not.

Write these about what changed for the person reading them. A schema migration is not a release note; the feature it made possible is. A release where nothing user-visible changed still needs a heading — rename it and say so in one line, so the decision is deliberate rather than made by default.

0.1.0 — the first build

English — 18/500:

The first release.

Polish — 18/500:

Pierwsze wydanie.

0.2.0 — your light, from the phone

English — 185/500:

Add your ceiling light and control it from your phone: on, off, brightness and colour. On brings back the setting you remembered. In English and Polish, with no account and no internet.

Polish — 193/500:

Dodaj swoją lampę sufitową i steruj nią z telefonu: włączanie, wyłączanie, jasność i barwa. Przycisk Włącz przywraca zapamiętane ustawienie. Po polsku i po angielsku, bez konta i bez internetu.

0.3.0 — scenes, a timer and Simple mode

English — 322/500:

Every light now has scenes: Evening, Reading and Night light come ready-made, and you can save your own. Rename a light, ask it to switch itself off in one or two hours, and switch all your lights off at once. Simple mode keeps a light's screen to On, Off and brightness; turn it on in Settings for whoever needs it plain.

Polish — 346/500:

Każde światło ma teraz sceny: Wieczór, Czytanie i Lampka nocna są gotowe, a własne możesz zapisać. Możesz zmienić nazwę światła, poprosić je o wyłączenie za godzinę lub dwie i wyłączyć wszystkie światła naraz. Tryb prosty zostawia na ekranie światła tylko Włącz, Wyłącz i jasność. Włącz go w Ustawieniach dla osoby, której wystarczy prosty widok.