Session 'app': Error Installing APK

Stanislav Barabanov picture Stanislav Barabanov · May 3, 2016 · Viewed 232.5k times · Source

Trying to install app on real device following instructions:- http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html. At end Android Studio giving error:

Session 'app': Error Installing APK 

I guess the problem probably can be in my android device(it is chinese Doogee X5). It does not have a given USB Vendor ID in developer docs so I decided to follow instructions with random vendor ID from HTC.

I'm sure there is a way to run application on any android device, but yet I didn't find an answer on how to do that.

I'm running through Linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Answer

Andras Kloczl picture Andras Kloczl · Jun 6, 2016

Edit:

In newer Android Studio versions you can re-sync the project using this button:

enter image description here

For older versions:

Open Gradle window (on the right side in Android Studio) and click on the refresh button.

However it is not a 100% sure fix.

Solutions for other cases:

Open terminal window and type "adb kill-server", then type "adb start-server". Usually after a few hours of inactivity, adb used to disconnect the device. (If you don't have the sdk/platform-tools in the PATH environment variable, then you should open a terminal in that folder)

One tip if these solutions don't help you: If you open the Event Log window in the right bottom corner of Android Studio, you can see a detailed error message.

Other edge case If you see this error: INSTALL_FAILED_INVALID_APK:... signatures are inconsistent. Then unfortunately a gradle refresh isn't enough, you have to go to Build -> Clean Project and then Run again.

Issue with Android emulator If you want to deploy the APK to an Android Emulator and you see the "Error installing APK" message, your emulator may be frozen and need restart.