Why does the Google Play store say my Android app is incompatible with my own device

Question

I am hesitant to ask this question  because it appears as though many people have a similar problem and yet I have found no solution that solves my particular instance   I have developed an Android app  link to the actual app  and have uploaded it to the Play store  The Play store says   This app is incompatible with your XT Mobile Network HTC HTC Wildfire S A510b     Of course that is the phone on which I developed the app  so it ought to be compatible  Some people with other devices say that it reports compatible  others say it reports incompatible  but I can find no trend   Apparently I don t know very many people with Android devices    I have tried the following    moving a large-ish file out of the res raw directory as suggested by this answer  The only file in there was a  700 kB text file  but I moved it to assets  with no apparent change  adding the following two feature assertions    lt uses-feature android name  android hardware faketouch    gt   lt uses-feature android name  android hardware touchscreen  android required  false    gt    thinking that maybe my phone doesn t claim to support the usual android hardware touchscreen feature  but again  with no apparent change    When uploading the APK to the Play store  the only filter that it reports as active is the android hardware faketouch feature   The following is the output of aapt dump badging bin NZSLDict-release apk   package  name  com hewgill android nzsldict  versionCode  3  versionName  1 0 2  sdkVersion  4  targetSdkVersion  4  uses-feature  android hardware faketouch  uses-feature-not-required  android hardware touchscreen  application-label  NZSL Dictionary  application-icon-160  res drawable icon png  application  label  NZSL Dictionary  icon  res drawable icon png  launchable-activity  name  com hewgill android nzsldict NZSLDictionary   label  NZSL Dictionary  icon    main other-activities supports-screens   small   normal   large  supports-any-density   true  locales   -- --  densities   160    and for completeness  my manifest file    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt manifest xmlns android  http   schemas android com apk res android        package  com hewgill android nzsldict        android versionCode  3        android versionName  1 0 2  gt       lt uses-sdk android minSdkVersion  4  android targetSdkVersion  4    gt       lt uses-feature android name  android hardware faketouch    gt       lt uses-feature android name  android hardware touchscreen  android required  false    gt       lt application android label   string app name          android icon   drawable icon  gt           lt activity android name  NZSLDictionary                    android label   string app name  gt               lt intent-filter gt                   lt action android name  android intent action MAIN    gt                   lt category android name  android intent category LAUNCHER    gt               lt  intent-filter gt           lt  activity gt           lt activity android name   WordActivity    gt           lt activity android name   VideoActivity    gt           lt activity android name   AboutActivity    gt       lt  application gt   lt  manifest gt     In the  Device Availability  section of the Play store  I can see that all the HTC devices  including the Wildfire S  are supported except for  G1  trout   and  Touch Viva  opal    whatever those are  Actually I see that both  Wildfire S  marvel   and  Wildfire S A515c  marvelc   are listed as supported  but my  Wildfire S A510b  is not specifically mentioned  Can this sort of sub-model identifier matter that much  I have been able to download several other apps from Google Play to my phone with no problems   The only thing I haven t done at this point is wait 4-6 hours after uploading the latest version  as in this comment  to see whether it still says it s incompatible with my phone  However  the Play store page currently shows 1 0 2 which is the latest I have uploaded

User · Answer

Though there are already quite a few answers, I thought my answer might help some who have exactly the same problem as mine. In my case, the problem is caused by the following permissions added per the suggestion of an ad network:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />

The consequence of the above permissions is that the following features are added automatically:

android.hardware.LOCATION
android.hardware.location.GPS
android.hardware.location.NETWORK

The reason is that "Google Play attempts to discover an application's implied feature requirements by examining other elements declared in the manifest file, specifically, elements." Two of my testing devices do not have the above features, so the app became incompatible with them. Removing those permissions solved the problem immediately.

User · Answer

Typical  found it right after posting this question in despair  the tool I was looking for was     aapt dump badging  lt my apk apk gt

User · Answer

I found an additional way in which this problem occurs  My LG phone s original OS was Froyo  Android 2 2  and was updated to ICS  Android 4 0 4   But the Google Play Developers  Console shows that it detects my phone as a Froyo device   Google Play did not allow the app to be downloaded because of the false  incompatibility   but it somehow still detects the installation    The phone s settings  in  software   shows ICS V4 0 4  It seems that the Google Play server info for the phone is not updated to reflect the ICS update on the device   The app manifest minSDK is set to Honeycomb  3 0   so of course Google Play filters out the app  Of addition interest  The app uses In-app Billing V3  The first time through IabHelper allows the app to make purchases through the Google Play service   But after the purchase is made  the purchase is NOT put in the inventory and IabHelper reports no items are owned  Debug messages show a  purchase failed  result from the purchase even though the Google Play window announces  purchase successful

User · Answer

I have experienced this problem too while developing an application for a customer that wanted to have videos offline available from their application  I have written a blogpost about why the app I worked on for months wouldn t show up in the play store for my device  post can be found here   I found the same as  Greg Hewgill found  Cache partition limitations on some devices   The journey didn t stop for me there  The customer wanted to have these videos in the application and didn t want the quality of the video to be decreased  After some research I figured out that using expansion files was the perfect solution to our problem   To share my knowledge with the Android community I held a talk at droidconNL 2012 about expansion files  I created a presentation and sample code to illustrate how easy it can be to start using expansion files  For any of you out there wanting to use expansion files to solve this problem feel free to check out the post containing the presentation and the sample code

User · Answer

I ran into this as well - I did all of my development on a Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A-F and could run development builds on it  and even release signed APKs  installed with adb install  with no issues   Once it was published in Alpha test mode and available on Google Play I received the  incompatible with your device  error message   It turns out I had placed in my AndroidManifest xml the following from a tutorial    lt uses-feature android name  android hardware camera    gt   lt uses-feature android name  android hardware camera autofocus    gt   lt uses-permission android name  android permission CAMERA    gt    Well  the Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A-F doesn t have an autofocusing camera on it  which I learned from http   www phonearena com phones Lenovo-IdeaTab-A2107 id7611  under Cons   lacks autofocus camera    Regardless of whether I was using that feature  Google Play said no   Once that was removed I rebuilt my APK  uploaded it to Google Play  and sure enough my IdeaTab was now in the compatible devices list   So  double-check every  lt uses-feature gt  and if you ve been doing some copy-paste from the web check again   Odds are you requested some feature you aren t even using

User · Answer

Permissions that Imply Feature Requirements  example  the android hardware bluetooth feature was added in Android 2 2  API level 8   but the bluetooth API that it refers to was added in Android 2 0  API level 5   Because of this  some apps were able to use the API before they had the ability to declare that they require the API via the  system   To prevent those apps from being made available unintentionally  Google Play assumes that certain hardware-related permissions indicate that the underlying hardware features are required by default  For instance  applications that use Bluetooth must request the BLUETOOTH permission in a  element     for legacy apps  Google Play assumes that the permission declaration means that the underlying android hardware bluetooth feature is required by the application and sets up filtering based on that feature   The table below lists permissions that imply feature requirements equivalent to those declared in  elements  Note that  declarations  including any declared android required attribute  always take precedence over features implied by the permissions below   For any of the permissions below  you can disable filtering based on the implied feature by explicitly declaring the implied feature explicitly  in a  element  with an android required  false  attribute  For example  to disable any filtering based on the CAMERA permission  you would add this  declaration to the manifest file    lt uses-feature android name  android hardware camera  android required  false    gt     lt uses-feature android name  android hardware bluetooth  android required  false    gt   lt uses-feature android name  android hardware location  android required  false    gt   lt uses-feature android name  android hardware location gps  android required  false    gt   lt uses-feature android name  android hardware telephony  android required  false    gt   lt uses-feature android name  android hardware wifi  android required  false    gt    http   developer android com guide topics manifest uses-feature-element html permissions

User · Answer

In Android some permissions  lt uses-permission gt  will imply  lt uses-feature gt  requirements to the app  For example  lt uses-permission android name  quot android permission BLUETOOTH quot    gt  Will imply  lt uses-feature android name  quot android hardware bluetooth quot   gt  You can check the whole list here https   developer android com guide topics manifest uses-feature-element permissions

User · Answer

Finlay  I have faced same issue in my application  I have developed Phone Gap app for  android minSdkVersion  7   amp  android targetSdkVersion  18  which is recent version of android platform    I have found the issue using Google Docs  May be issue is that i have write some JS function which works on KEY-CODE to validate only Alphabets  amp  Number but key board has different key code specially for computer keyboard  amp  Mobile keyboard  So that was my issue   I am not sure whether my answer is correct or not and it might be possible that it could be smiler to above answer but i will try to list out some points which should be care while we are building the app I hope you follow this to solve this kind of issue     Use the android minSdkVersion     as per your requirement  amp  android targetSdkVersion     should be latest in which your app will targeting  see more Try to add only those permission which will be use in your application and remove all which are unnecessary   Check out the supported screen by application    lt supports-screens  android anyDensity  true  android largeScreens  true  android normalScreens  true  android resizeable  true  android smallScreens  true  android xlargeScreens  true   gt   May be you have implement some costume code or costume widget which couldn t able to run in some device or tab late so before writing the long code first try to write some beta code and test it whether your code will run in all device or not  And I hope Google will publish a tool which can validate your code before the upload the app and also says that due to some specific reason we are not allow to run your app in some device so we can easily solve it

User · Answer

If you re here in 2020 and you think the device receiving the error message should be compatible      Several other major apps have run into this including Instagram  1B  installs  and Clash of Clans  100M  installs   It appears to be an issue with Google s Android operating system        To fix the    your device is not compatible with this version    error message  try clearing the Google Play Store cache  and then data  Next  restart the Google Play Store and try installing the app again      https   support getupside com hc en-us articles 226667067--Device-not-compatible-error-message-in-Google-Play-Store   Here is a link to Google s official support page that you can link to your users on how to clear the cache  https   support google com googleplay answer 7513003

User · Answer

You might want to try and set the supports-screens attribute    lt supports-screens     android largeScreens  true      android normalScreens  true      android smallScreens  true      android xlargeScreens  true   gt   lt  supports-screens gt    The Wildfire has a small screen  and according to the documentation this attribute should default to  true  in all cases  but there are known issues with the supports-screens settings on different phones  so I would try this anyway   Also - as David suggests - always compile and target against the most current version of the Android API  unless you have strong reasons not to  Pretty much every SDK prior to 2 2 has some serious issue or weird behavior  the latter SDK s help to resolve or cover up a lot  although not all  of them  You can  and should  use the Lint tool to check that your app remains compatible with API 4 when preparing a release

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I also had the same problem  I published an App in Test mode created with React Native 59  it wasn t compatible for certain tester   The message wasn t clear about why the app is not compatible   after i figured out that i restricted the app to be available only for certain country   that was the problem  but as i said the message wasn t clear  in Play Store WebApp the message is   this app is not compatible with your device   in the mobile app the message  This app is not available in your country

User · Answer

To give an extra solution to the above  This app is incompatible with your     problem  let me share my solution for a different problem cause  I tried installing an app on a low-end Samsung Galaxy Y  GT-S6350  device and got this error from the Play store  To test various AndroidManifest configurations  I created an account and followed the routine as described in https   stackoverflow com a 5449397 372838 until my device showed up in the supported device list   It turned out that a lot of devices become incompatible when you use the Camera permission    lt uses-permission android name  android permission CAMERA    gt   When I removed that specific permission  the application was available for 1180 devices instead of 870  Hope it will help someone

User · Answer

I had the same problem  It was caused by having different version codes and numbers in my manifest and gradle build script  I resolved it by removing the version code and version number from my manifest and letting gradle take care of it

User · Answer

The answer appears to be solely related to application size  I created a simple  quot hello world quot  app with nothing special in the manifest file  uploaded it to the Play store  and it was reported as compatible with my device  I changed nothing in this app except for adding more content into the res drawable directory  When the  apk size reached about 32 MB  the Play store started reporting that my app was incompatible with my phone  I will attempt to contact Google developer support and ask for clarification on the reason for this limit  UPDATE  Here is Google developer support response to this   Thank you for your note  Currently the maximum file size limit for an app upload to Google Play is approximately 50 MB  However  some devices may have smaller than 50 MB cache partition making the app unavailable for users to download  For example  some of HTC Wildfire devices are known for having 35-40 MB cache partitions  If Google Play is able to identify such device that doesn t have cache large enough to store the app  it may filter it from appearing for the user   I ended up solving my problem by converting all the PNG files to JPG  with a small loss of quality  The  apk file is now 28 MB  which is below whatever threshold Google Play is enforcing for my phone  I also removed all the  lt uses-feature gt  stuff  and now have just this   lt uses-sdk android minSdkVersion  quot 4 quot  android targetSdkVersion  quot 15 quot    gt

User · Answer

I have a couple of suggestions    First of all  you seem to be using API 4 as your target  AFAIK  it s good practice to always compile against the latest SDK and setup your android minSdkVersion accordingly  With that in mind  remember that android required attribute was added in API 5       The feature declaration can include an android required   true     false   attribute  if you are compiling against API level 5 or higher   which lets you specify whether the application         Thus  I d suggest that you compile against SDK 15  set targetSdkVersion to 15 as well  and provide that functionality   It also shows here  on the Play site  as incompatible with any device that I have that is  coincidence   Gingerbread  Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Y here   But it shows as compatible with my Galaxy Tab 10 1  Honeycomb   Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus  both on ICS    That also left me wondering  and this is a very wild guess  but since android hardware faketouch is API11   why don t you try removing it just to see if it works  Or perhaps that s all related anyway  since you re trying to use features  faketouch  and the required attribute that are not available in API 4  And in this case you should compile against the latest API   I would try that first  and remove the faketouch requirement only as last resort  of course  --- since it works when developing  I d say it s just a matter of the compiled app not recognizing the feature  due to the SDK requirements   thus leaving unexpected filtering issues on Play   Sorry if this guess doesn t answer your question  but it s very difficult to diagnose those kind of problems and pinpoint the solution without actually testing  Or at least for me without all the proper knowledge of how Play really filters apps   Good luck

[android] Why does the Google Play store say my Android app is incompatible with my own device?

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