Living in Lebanon, I’m used to seeing limited app compatibility on the Play Store. Some apps are just not available in my country for a logical reason, others aren’t because who-knows-why, and a few are limited to carriers or specific devices. I am, however, definitely not used to seeing “You don’t have any devices” on every single app that I visit on the Play Store, which is what happened to me yesterday. I chalked it off as the Play Store being the Play Store, which is to say sometimes weird and slow to realize that I have at least 7 different Android devices that the app can be installed on, and moved on.
But the bug didn’t just hit me. It affected and keeps on affecting several members of the Android Police team, including Bertel and Artem (#artemsluck), who keep on seeing that alarming red exclamation point during most of their Play Store visits. Below is a GIF showing the Android Auto page being refreshed a few times, the first two with the bug, then the third time finally showing that there are indeed a few compatible phones among the huge list of devices on Artem’s account.
The bug doesn’t actually affect whether or not you can install apps on your devices. Even with the Play Store apparently not recognizing any of your phones, tablets, and TVs, you can still click on Install and pick a device in the list. It’s just a visible annoyance where users might assume an app is not available for their country or devices and not bother to click the install button to verify that. Those of us who have tens of Android phones and tablets attached to our accounts are also freaking out because surely, something on that list has to work with that app, right?
Artem has started a Google+ poll to see if the issue is widespread or not, and so far 16% of the almost 900 votes say that they’re being greeted by the red alert notice of hell almost every time. 26% are seeing it sporadically, and 58% haven’t come across it.
If you’re one of the unlucky ones, I offer a pat on the back and the useless information that we’ve reached out to Google to report this issue but haven’t heard back yet. In the meantime, patience is your friend and so is the reflex to click on Install regardless of what the Play Store tells you.
Update 1: 2015/11/17 2:51am PST
Google PR reached out a few days ago to let us know they’d seen the post and that the Play Store team had already quickly pushed out the fix for the issue.
We’ve been testing for a few days, and, indeed, it looks like the “You don’t have any devices” problem has been resolved.