Control when a committed Google Play release goes live using managed publishing and edits.commit changesNotSentForReview

Documented steps

1. In Play Console open Publishing overview, find 'Managed publishing status', turn managed publishing on and save. This requires 'Release to production' or Admin permission and can be toggled even while changes are under review.
2. Know what managed publishing holds: full and staged rollouts, store listing updates, app content changes, and pre-registration launches all wait for an explicit publish action.
3. Know what it does not hold: increasing an existing staged rollout to 100 percent, release notes updates, device exclusion changes, and price changes still apply immediately.
4. Build the edit normally: edits.insert, upload artifacts, tracks.update, then POST .../edits/{editId}:commit.
5. To have committed changes accumulate in Play Console without being sent for review, pass changesNotSentForReview=true on edits.commit. Those changes then wait until someone explicitly sends them for review from the Play Console UI.
6. Omit changesNotSentForReview to let commit send the changes for review as normal.
7. Set changesInReviewBehavior separately: leave it at the CANCEL_IN_REVIEW_AND_SUBMIT default to override any in-flight review, or ERROR_IF_IN_REVIEW to fail rather than cancel a review you do not own.
8. Treat the two parameters as independent: one governs collision with an existing review, the other governs whether your own changes enter review at all.
9. After Google approves, the changes sit in Play Console's ready-to-publish state instead of going live.
10. To release, a human or a sufficiently privileged operator clicks 'Publish changes' in Publishing overview. The edits resource exposes no separate go-live call.
11. Expect processing delay after publishing: Google states processing can take a few hours, up to seven days, or longer in exceptional cases, before changes reach users.