Android 15 ghost updates and devices in the Play Store

[timkgh]

Sometimes when I refresh to check for new updates it shows a couple of available updates, then if I refresh again, the updates are either completely gone or replaced by a subset or by other updates. Keep refreshing and the list changes or it shows there are now updates. Going to the Play Store for these updates doesn't show that new versions of the apps are available. This started happening either with the Android 15 upgrade or maybe with some recent AppWatcher app update.

[timkgh]

@anod AppWatcher has become unreliable. I get notifications there are 25 app updates but there aren't any. If I refresh the number changes, or it goes down to 0 or then again to seemingly a random number.
Is this an Android 15 issue?

[anod]

The behavior of generating device id was changed in Android 15, this id is used to detect what apps supported by the device... I've implemented, but there still some issues

[mxxcon]

I just upgraded to Pixel 9 which has Android 15 and it's experiencing the same problem. Every time I refresh it shows me that supposedly a different app has update.

[timkgh]

Is it possible that now AppWatcher is also causing a ghost device to show up in the Play Store?
https://play.google.com/library/devices

I see a phone without a carrier that gets a fresh timestamp for Last Used and Registered On every day.

[mxxcon]

Same here. My Pixel 9 Pro shows up twice, once with my carrier and once "No carrier".

[timkgh]

I've uninstalled AppWatcher for now, let's see if the ghost Pixel 9 drops off from the list eventually.

The crazy part is that the actual Pixel 9 does not show up at all in the list. But the phone is registered and logged in to my Google account, the Play Store app on the phone itself works fine, I can install apps, etc. It makes it impossible though to send an app from the web Play Store to the phone.

Also, my Chromebook and Watch disappeared from the list of devices too.

@anod it seems that AppWatcher does something to the device list that Google Play Store is not happy about.

[anod]

Interesting, there are some hardcoded values that look like they needs to be initialized correctly

[mxxcon]

The crazy part is that the actual Pixel 9 does not show up at all in the list. But the phone is registered and logged in to my Google account, the Play Store app on the phone itself works fine, I can install apps, etc. It makes it impossible though to send an app from the web Play Store to the phone.

I'm also seeing somewhat similar behavior. I also have Galaxy S20FE (Android 13) from which I upgraded to this pixel at the start of December, and even older LG V30 (Android 9).
S20FE is missing from that list but V30 is there(but I never used Verizon Wireless service). And on both of them AppWatcher works fine. It's only Pixel that has this problem.

I'm not saying AppWatcher caused this. I don't know what's happening there.

[timkgh]

@anod I have confirmed that AppWatcher creates lots and lots of similar devices in the Play Store. I requested a Google Takeout and I looked at Google Play Store/Devices.json. I have 137 similar "no carrier" phones over the past 60 days. They stopped when I uninstalled AppWatcher. Good news is that they seem to drop off after 60 days and the real devices will eventually start showing up in the Play Store again.

Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that you somehow mark the app incompatible with Android 15 or have a big warning in the Play Store for people to not install it until fixed.