Session 'app': Error Installing APK

Question

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 1

A bit late to the party, but be sure that you are trying to build a proper build variant. It sometimes happens to me that when I update AS, the build variants are totally messed up, so instead of building the "debug" variant I am actually building the "release" variant, which outputs apk to a different location (not to app/build directory, but to app directly) and I get the following error:

The APK file /path/to/file/app.apk does not exist on disk.
Error while Installing APK

To fix this just open the menu in left bottom corner, click on "Build Variants" and select the debug variant (it might have a different name, depending on how many modules/flavors or custom gradle build types you have).

Answer 2

Another possibility may be the USB driver on your PC. In my case, switching from my 3.0 USB port to my 2.0 port fixed the problem.

Answer 3

If you are using android emulator, try changing a device.

Answer 4

tldr;

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.

Answer 5

Make sure that your device is not out of Memory!

Answer 6

Nothing above helped me. The fingerprint dialog did not appear. I checked another android device and the dialog appeared and debug was possible. So the problem was on device side not on computer side I made reset "to factory settings" on device and this helped me.