Can not Generate Signed .apk Using Android Studio

Question

I am trying to export a Signed APK to submit to the play store but when I click Build->Generate Signed APK that option is grayed out and I can not select it.

Answer 1

Synchronising the project seemed to have solved the issue for me:

File > Synchronize

Answer 2

Have you tried checking your project structure has an Android facet? Look under

File > Project Structure > Project Settings > Facets

This was missing for my project and prevented it from building.

Answer 3

I am finding in the latest versions of Android Studio the File > Project Structure > Project Settings > Facets path does not exist.

To reach Facets do this:

On your Project tree click on the upper most element, the Project itself. Then right mouse to expose the menu item Open Module Settings.

There you will find:

Project Structure Window with Facets

Once you are there then I was successful in enabling the "Generate Signed APK" Build Menu item by adding the facets as shown below:

Facets that worked for me building a Flutter app

My apologies for the external links to the images, I don't have enough reputation points yet.

Answer 4

I'm not sure why this is happening, but as a workaround you could use gradle build tasks.

I generally do all this from the command line. If you don't have any build flavors, try doing the following:

./gradlew assembleRelease

You can see multiple ways to sign your build using this process here: How to create a release signed apk file using Gradle?