App not Installed Error on Android

Question

I have a program working in the Android Emulator  Every now and again I have been creating a signed  apk and exporting it to my HTC Desire to test  It has all been fine   On my latest exported  apk I get the error message  App not installed  when I try to install the  apk  It runs fine on the emulators   As I have mainly been testing on the emulators and only every now and again exporting to a real phone I am not sure when this happened  What is the likely cause of it not installing on a physical phone but running fine in the emulators   I have tried rebooting the phone  amp  removing the existing  apk  does not fix the fault

User · Answer

I fixed this by not signing the app first and not with Maven. I added this to my build path.

    <plugin>
        <groupId>com.jayway.maven.plugins.android.generation2</groupId>
        <artifactId>android-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <inherited>true</inherited>
        <configuration>
            <sign>
                <debug>false</debug>
            </sign>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>

After that I signed my app by hand: jarsigner -verbose -sigalg MD5withRSA -digestalg SHA1 -keystore /home/myself/.android/release.keystore myapp-1.0.apk androidreleasekey

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I faced a similar issue today and at first i thought it was my sd card which corrupted it  I tried it on many devices running android 4 4 and up but it kept bringing the same issue After some googling and research i realized that i didn t select the v1 jar signature which is for devices older than android 7 0 nougat so i applied both of these signatures by selecting the two check boxes and generated a signed apk and it worked     Link to solution Android     App not installed error when installing a signed APK     How to Fix

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Using Android Studio  I had previously installed the unsigned debug version of the APK  Build   Build APK  and had to uninstall it before installing the signed release version  Build Variants   Build Variant  release  Build   Generate Signed APK

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Apparently this can also be caused by renaming the APK prior to installing it  I wanted to reduce the amount of typing users had to do to get the app from our web site by shortening the file name  After that  they were unable to install it   Once I reverted to the original file name used when creating and signing the package I was able to update the installed app

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Sideloading debug apps for testing on a physical phone worked reliably until I upgraded the phone from Android Pie to Android 10  After that  the  App not installed  error came up every time I tried to sideload the app   Based on a warning in my AndroidManifest xml  I changed from      lt application     android name   App      android allowBackup  true        gt    to      lt application     android name   App      android allowBackup  false        gt    After that  I was able to sideload my app -- once  Then  I encountered the same  App not installed  error again  By changing allowBackup back to true  it worked again  at least once    It is obvious from the number of answers and the variation in the answers that there are many reasons for this problem  I m sharing this in case it helps others

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create keystore file through command line  keytool -genkey -alias key file name keystore -keyalg RSA -validity 1000000000000000 -keystore key file name keystore  export apk through Eclipse  right click on Android project Android Tools   Export Signed Application Package  then give keystore location  amp  password   this will crate signed apk at the same time apk will be zipaligned  And installable   If you go through command line for all  some times you may face  Application not installed  error   Application not installed error can happen not only  when using command line  It can be some other reasons as well

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My problem was similar to that of  Lunatikzx  Because of wrong permission tag which was written as attribute to application    lt application     android permission  android permission WRITE EXTERNAL STORAGE      android label   string app name      android icon   drawable ic launcher      android testOnly  false      android debuggable  true  gt    What fixed it for me was changing permission tag to separate tag like this    lt uses-permission android name  android permission WRITE EXTERNAL STORAGE    gt

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I faced the issue when I update my android from 2 3 2 to 3 0 1   If this is the case the IDE will automatically considers the following points   1 You cannot install an app with android testOnly  true  by conventional means  such as from an Android file manager or from a download off of a Web site  2 Android Studio sets android testOnly  true  on APKs that are run from    if you run your app directly connecting the device to your system  apk will install and run no problem   if you sent this apk by copy from build out put and debug folder it will never install in the device    Solution  go Build ---  Build APK s  ---  copy the apk file share to your team  then your problem will solve

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I also encountered this issue   Kindly try this solution  Make sure that the package name of your project is different from your previous project that was already installed in your mobile phone  I think they get conflict  in their names    It works in me

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delete  apk file from build output apk folder in your app module project main module    delete  idea and  gradle folder from root of the project  clean the project  click on gradle icon from sidebar in android studio and click sync icon to refresh all project   now run the project and it should work

User · Answer

I faced with the same problem  The problem was the main activity in my AndroidManifest xml file was written twice  I deleted the duplicate

User · Answer

try to this change in the AndroidManifest xml    setting debuggable to true signing the apk

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If you have a previous version for that application try to erase it first  now my problem was solved by that method

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I have also solved this issue    The problem was that i declared my main activity twice   On as the first activity to load and i specified also an intent-filter for it And once again below it i declared it again    Just make sure you don t declare your activities twice

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Clearly there are many causes of this problem  For me the situation was this  I had deployed to my nexus 7  actual device  from within the Android Studio  v1 3 2   All worked fine  I then created a signed apk and uploaded to my Google Drive  After disconnecting my nexus from the usb  I went to the settings apps and uninstalled my app  App1   I then opened google drive and clicked on my App1 apk and chose to install it  need to ensure you have allowed installation of apks in settings   Then I got the dreaded message  App not Installed   Solution for me  go back into settings apps and scroll though all apps and at the bottom was a pale version of my App1  note the original App1 was at the top in Alphabetical order which was deleted as above   When clicking on the pale version it said  Not installed for this user    I had set up my nexus to have more than one user   But in the top right corner there is a three dot button  I pressed this and it said  Uninstall for all users   Which I did and it fixed the problem  I was now able to click on App1 apk and it installed fine without the error

User · Answer

I had the same type of error this was cauysed by this line in my android manifest XML file   android permission  android permission INSTALL LOCATION PROVIDER    I removed the line and it solved my issue  Hope this helps

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Open your logCat when trying to install the app  Set it to  No Filters   Search for  InstallAppProgress  package identifier  If the install fails you should see an  Installation error code   In my case it was   D InstallAppProgress  Installation error code  -7   From here you can use this link to find information about your specific error code

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In my case my previous released app had signed by another key  so I ve uninstalled it  but on my test phone  LG G4 H-818  2 users exists so previous app still installed on my phone and didn t uninstalled properly  so when I tried to install it again  it failed     So I ve tried to change user and uninstall previous app  finally app installed properly   Hope it helps you in future

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Sometimes storage not available is also should be mention because I face this issue because that the device that needs to be installed doesn t have enough space and also the system is not alert to the user  You can just find out because of debugging

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I have encountered this issue in various forms  but this time it was a new one   In this case  I had providers names collision - the same provider name existed in my app and another of my apps

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This can happen if you have your MainActivity declared twice in your AndroidManifest xml   Another possible reason  you changed the launch activity  Hint  never do it with already published applications  Reasons discussed in Android Developers blog

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Check with the Android version   If you are installing non-market apps  and incompatible version you will get this error   Ex  Application targetted to 2 3 4      Your device is 2 2     Then you will get this error

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For those who are using Android Studio 3   Suryanarayana Reddy s Answer is correct thought it doesn t state steps to solve it  hence   in your AndroidManifest xml under the application tag add testOnly  false   and android debuggable  true  like so    lt application     android allowBackup  true      android icon   mipmap ic launcher      android label   string app name      android roundIcon   mipmap ic launcher round      android supportsRtl  true      android theme   style AppTheme      android testOnly  false      android debuggable  true       gt    Edit then in AndroidStudio s menubar Build   Build APK s

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If you are using cordova try to uninstall any previous app that is build through cordova  Strange but this method solved my problem

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When this problem happened to me  I fixed it by deleting some non-essential files that I had in my project folder  like the keystore   In hindsight  it d probably be bad to give people the keys to your game

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In the end I found out that no apps were being installed successfully  not just mine  I set the Install App default from SD card to Automatic  That fixed it

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You should save this as Debug and not release  check the two JAR signs and also allow installing apps from where you have downloaded this  WhatsApp  chrome  etc

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This answer is relevant only for apps that use native libraries  Android NDK    In my case the problem was that some native libraries were missing from jniLibs for the target phone s CPU architecture  Hence the app was working on the emulator  but on a real phone I got  App not installed    I had originally copied the compiled native libraries only for the x86 architecture  so the app worked on the emulator  However  the other architectures were missing  x86 64  armeabi v7a  arm64-v8a   After adding the missing   so files for all architectures into jniLibs  the  App not installed  error went away

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I had a similar issue and it was because I was trying to install an apk on a phone with a previous version of the same apk  and both apks hadn t been signed with the same certificate  I mean when I used the same certificate I was able to overwrite the previous installation  but when I changed the certificate between versions  the installation was not possible  Are you using the same certificate

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It can also happen if there is not enough space in the internal memory  I had 500Mb free  but it wasn t enough  Try free like 1Gb

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open AndroidMainfest then add verionCode  versionName in application tag and make sure debug able equal false    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt manifest xmlns android  http   schemas android com apk res android  xmlns tools  http   schemas android com tools  package       gt    lt application             android debuggable  false      android versionCode  1      android versionName  1 0      tools ignore  HardcodedDebugMode  gt           lt  application gt      then open build gradle  module app  make sure verionCode  versionName exited and minsdk  lt   your mobile sdk   defaultConfig               minSdkVersion 19     targetSdkVersion 28     versionCode 1     versionName  1 0             look into sources  https   developer android com studio publish    amp      https   developer android com studio publish preparing   amp      https   developer android com studio publish versioning  and     https   developer android com studio publish app-signing

User · Answer

In Marsmallow in owner and guest user is there If guest installed the same app we can not install the same app in owner I fixed this delete the app in guest

User · Answer

The  Application not installed  error can also occur if the app has been installed to or moved to the SD card  and then the USB cable has been connected  causing the SD card to unmount   Turning off USB storage or moving the app back to internal storage would fix the issue in this case

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I faced this issue with my latest app release to playstore  The issue is combination of change of MainLauncher and app shortcut     We have added a splash screen and our entry point is SplashActivity instead of MainActivity  So  people who has previous versions and have app shortcut on their home screen can t open the app  It always says something like App not installed toast  This doesn t happen on every launcher  For us it s more common on Samsungs     Behind the scenes  App shortcut should be seamlessly update entry point from MainActivity to SplashActivity  But  for some reason many third party launchers are not obeying it  The fix is clear the shortcut and add it again   If you havn t update your app yet in playstore  go through this article   Beware when updating the launcher activity

User · Answer

If you tried all the answers above and none of them worked  you might want to try this   If your build variant is  debug   then you should add this under buildTypes in the app build gradle for the app to install on your device   debug       minifyEnabled false

User · Answer

In my case it was because I was using the alpha version of support library 28  Looks like Google marks these pre release versions as testOnly  If you really want to release like this  for instance  you want to push an internal beta like I did   you can add this line to your gradle properties file   android injected testOnly false

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I had the same problem  I did not realise that an app must be signed even for testing   After self signing it  it installed fine

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I have experienced this  App not installed  error when the device I was installing to didn t have enough storage  Deleting a few files allowed the app to install  Odd that it didn t give me a  not enough space  message instead   Note  I was installing an apk manually from an  unknown  location

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I know this is an old post  but for new users may be useful  I had the same problem  my application worked fine while debbuging  When I signed the APK I got the same message   Application not installed    I fixed that uninstalled my JDK  I was using jdk-6u14-windows-x64  and installed a new one  jdk-6u29-windows-x64   After export and sign the APK again  everything was ok    Resuming  my problem was in JAVA version  Thank s Oracle

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If someone is having this issue  check the build number  If your build number is less than the installed app build number  your app will not install and you will get the    Corrupted app or apk file       To fix it just increment your build number until it is equal or greater than the installed build number

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In my case  it s because Android Studio 3 0 sets android testOnly  true  on APKs that build from the release Build Variant       https   commonsware com blog 2017 10 31 android-studio-3p0-flag-test-only html   So run   gradlew assembleRelease solve my issue

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for me the cause was that i had multiple builds using different build variants on same phone      what happened was that some of these builds were built by me  another one was sent to me by another developer   trying to install the developers while i had other builds  built by me  caused the above error   so the fix was simple  delete all the builds on my phone  regardless of build variant    then install the apk sent by my peer   and it worked like a charm

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I found that if I built my app with compileSdkVersion  buildToolsVersion  and targetSdkVersion all set to the default value of 30 in my build gradle file  then the app would not install on my phone  However  if I changed them back down to version 29  it worked  What the issue turned out to be was that from SDK 30 onwards you need to select V2 jar signing  For more info see Why does the Android SDK 30 generate invalid APK files

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If application s not installing  delete the file  android secure smdl2tmpl asec from the SD card   If the folder  android secure is empty in the file manager  delete it from the PC

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You also may encounter this issue because your device manufacturer did not license the Google commercial apps  such as Play Store  YouTube  Google Maps  etc  Follow this answer to solve the problem

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I tried all the methods that are generally posted  Was just about to give up  The signing thing solved it  Found some app that literally said  quot apk signer quot   and it did it

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For me  On Android 9  API 28   disabling Google Play Protect from play store app worked the trick  and i was able to get rid of the App not Installed error      To disable Google Play Protect  Open  Play Store  application    tap   on Menu button    select  Play Protect  option    Disable the options    Scan device for security threats

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ARGHHHHH  I was trying to install as Unsigned Release APK when the proper setting was DEBUG SDK   There goes an hour

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I ran into this when I had a bug with my custom build tool that would use ADT with a certificate intended for iOS  It certainly wasn t my first guess  since there doesn t seem to be anything special about the Android certificates other than only you should have one  they are just RSA-1024 certs  even self-signed is ok  at least for non-marketplace installs

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Make sure that these tips considered    Your build variants and Flavors should be same App installed and new one   usually release Signature file must be the same   jks file  The version you set in build gradle or AndroidManifest have greater value compared to current version it is recommended to set version in build gradle  URL is correct doesn t have typo  and server is reachable WebService WebMethod WIFI is running available and      File downloaded completely File saved correctly into desired directory Setting for Data and Type in setDataAndType is correct

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My problem was that I have multiple user accounts on the device  I deleted the app on 1 account  but it still was installed on the other account  Thus the namespace collided and did not install  Uninstalling the app from all user fixed it for me

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This can also occur when making a home screen widget  and your widget XML file has an incorrect Activity specified in its android configure property

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If you are trying to install an apk directly from Google Drive  just restarting the device solved the issue for me

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In my case i removed Useless permissions that are not required  I Only Needed 1 permission   lt uses-permission android name  android permission ACCESS FINE LOCATION    gt    And remove unwanted permissions that are not required and started giving this error   lt uses-permission android name  android permission ACCESS LOCATION EXTRA COMMANDS    gt   lt uses-permission android name  android permission INSTALL LOCATION PROVIDER    gt   lt uses-permission android name  android permission CONTROL LOCATION UPDATES    gt

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I had a similar situation I was able to install app in debug mode using USB but not a signed version  I was able to install signed version on other phone  but not on my device  Numerous reasons and solutions did not help me  But one direction I got from a solution  quot uninstall for all users quot   What I did is to again install app in debug mode using USB connection  go to app details and  quot uninstall for all users quot  from right top 3 dots - to remove debug version  This looks like cleared all kinds of references  I usually do a normal uninstall  Now I am able to get signed APK on the device and install and its success

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In case  you have your app s older version installed from Google Play and you want to test the newer release version of your app      Open Google Play Console   Upload the newer release version of your app to Alpha   Beta  but do not release it yet           You can now download the derived apk       Install the downloaded derived apk on your phone now   The derived apk is re-signed by Google Play with a different key from the release app Android Studio generates

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Primarily for older phones I only encountered the App not installed error when trying to install an apk on my phone which runs on 4 4 2 aka KitKat  but my friend did not encounter this error on his phone which runs on 6   I tried the other solutions such as removing the old debug version of the app because the apk was a release version  clearing the debug app s data  and even clearing all of my cached data  Then  finally I realized all I had to do was select both signature versions when building my signed apk   Before I only had V2  Full APK Signature  selected  but after selecting V1 Jar Signature as well  I was able to successfully install my signed APK on my 4 4 2 device  Hope this helps others

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I also faced the same issue  In my application had services in it  The services was running in the background even after the application was uninstalled  after doing a force stop of the application  got a message saying the application was uninstalled  Then I installed the application with out any problem

User · Answer

I had the same problem and here is how solved it   Go to the Manifest file and make sure you have the  Debuggable  and the  Test Only  attributes set to false  It worked for me

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My problem was  I used the Debug Apk  that was generated while I did the Run command from Android Studio  Solution was  Instead of using this file  clean project and click Build   Build APK s  from Android Studio  Then you can use the generated APK from the usual folder  app build outputs apk debug    The file that was generated like this installed without a problem

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I had the same issue  i e  App showed up as being installed  but would not launched when the icon was tapped  After some head-banging  I found that I had stupidly placed   android exported  false    for my main launcher activity within the AndroidManifest file     Once I removed it  the App launched fine

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I d signed the app with 2 different certs  so removing the older version with the older cert and then reinstalling the new one solved the problem for me

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Sometimes it is because you have no enough space on your phone  If so  try to clean up your memory to create space for new installations

[android] 'App not Installed' Error on Android

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