Google Play’s got a new system for letting apps deliver age-appropriate experiences

TL;DR Google Play is preparing for the global rollout of its Age Signals API. The API lets parents share the age ranges of young users without revealing specific personal info. Apps can then deliver age-appropriate experiences tailored to those ranges.

Google already gives parents control over what their children have access to on Android devices through features like Family Link , but what about the flip side of that? While parents can limit access to apps for kids they think are too young, how about giving developers the ability to tailor an app’s presentation to users of a certain age? It turns out Google already came up with a system for doing just that — and it’s just about to make its big global debut.

It’s called the Play Age Signals API , and it’s designed to offer a privacy-preserving way for users to share their ages with developers. Instead of revealing anything as personal as a birth date, Play Age Signals instead allows apps to query Google Play for the age range a user falls into: Those are set to 0-12, 13-15, 16-17, and 18+ by default.