Web App Migration Strategy

[Les]

Hi.

We have a web app for FireTV. My understanding is that web apps will be (or already have been) discontinued, i.e. you can no longer submit a new web app.

Also, it’s my understanding is that existing web apps have been wrapped as Android apk packages. For our web app, I see two auto generated APKs created for our web app in our dashboard:

AutoGeneratedApk
AutoGeneratedApkGen6

In the case of AutoGeneratedApk, the manifest has some strange configurations one of which is android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE. Our app, which runs on FireTV, is not interested in phone state; this makes no sense in the context in which the app runs.

Unfortunately, for some users, when they install our app, they’re prompted to give permission for our app to access their phone. This could be, understandably, a road block for someone wanting to install our app.

I’m not sure how to change this without submitting a new version of our app, and that leads to my question.

Should I just create an android app for TV and drop a webview which is in turn populated with our existing web app? Is that acceptable? Or should I bite the bullet and rebuild the app as a native Android app?

I found this post when searching about this subject:

Fire Tv web apps also discontinued?

Hello @Nicolas_di_Rago , Thanks for posting. Amazon Appstore has discontinued the Creator Service and the web-based app submission process for all devices, including Fire TV. If you previously used these services to create apps for Fire TV or tablets, you can update your apps to a new version in Amazon Developer Console. All apps have been converted to Android apps on Amazon Developer Console. You can update your apps by submitting a new Android package app, with the same package name and a hi…

But when I look at the page linked to in the post, it doesn’t seem to apply to my app (I have no config.xml file, for example).

This post seems to indicate that there a variety of ways to do what I’m asking:

Web apps discontinued

Hi David, Welcome to the forum, and thanks for posting! Your assumptions that Amazon “are totally not accepting new TV channel apps at all” or that an app “has no chance of being reviewed” are not accurate. Amazon Creator was simply one of the tools developers could use to quickly create video / media apps for Fire TV. With that service deprecated, you can still use any other available frameworks / SDKs / etc to create your media app. For example, you can use Android Studio directly, or use Cor…

Thank you for any help or advice.

[Levon]

Hi Les,

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for posting! Yes, you are correct in that web apps submission has been deprecated (Oct 2024). Regarding your questions:

Should I just create an android app for TV and drop a webview which is in turn populated with our existing web app? Is that acceptable?

Yes, that’s acceptable, and indeed you can create an Android app, add a WebView component to its activity, and then load your web files or URL into it.

Or should I bite the bullet and rebuild the app as a native Android app?

You may do that too for a better performance and more control, but it’s not necessary.

I hope that answers your questions!