'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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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!!

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

My problem was similar to that of @Lunatikzx. Because of wrong permission tag which was written as attribute to application:

<application
    android:permission="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:testOnly="false"
    android:debuggable="true">

What fixed it for me was changing permission tag to separate tag like this:

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

Answer 5

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?

Answer 6

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.