getting " 'android:icon' attribute: attribute is not a string value” error while uploading an APK to the play store

Question

Background

After so many hours of my free time, I'm ready to publish my very first app to the play store, but sadly I'm having difficulties uploading the signed app.

I've successfully exported the app with the keystore I've created (all via Eclipse & ADT), so I have the signed APK to be uploaded to the play store (here).

The problem

I keep getting this message:

Upload failed Your APK cannot be analyzed using 'aapt dump badging'. Error output: Failed to run aapt dump badging: W/ResourceType(14856): No known package when getting value for resource number 0x01080049 ERROR getting 'android:icon' attribute: attribute is not a string value

as such:

The app itself works very well on real devices, and the image file being used is a normal PNG file as used by the android-assets-studio website.

What I've tried

I've searched here on StackOverflow and found many posts about it (here). I've read many of them and tried the next things, but nothing has helped:

1. put the app icon on a different folder/s ("drawable", "drawable-mdpi", ... even "drawable-xxxhdpi") with multiple combinations (put/remove from each of the folders).

2. setting the label, icon and theme on both the "application" tag and on the launcher activity tag.

3. change the image file name and the file itself (replaced it with the default app icons).

4. clean up the project.

5. Checking Lint messages.

6. updating ADT (to 22.3.0.v201310242005-887826), Eclipse (to Kepler Service Release 1), SDK tools (to 22.3), SDK build tools (to 19.0.1). Everything is pretty much the latest official version.

7. checking that there's no double jar file being used (that no jar file exists on more than one library, especially if it has different versions).

8. tried putting the strings.xml into "res/values-en" instead of "res/values"

9. tried adding "android:value" attribute to all meta-data tags on the manifest (suggested by Google). It didn't work. In fact, in all of the tutorials I've read, I never saw such a requirement from an AppWidget, so I think it's not needed anyway.

10. tried the aapt command:

    aapt dump badging
    

This has shown me about the same thing the play store shows (I've replaced the real package name and app name with XXX just here):

application: label='XXX XXX' icon='res/drawable-mdpi/app_icon.png'
launchable-activity: name='XXX.XXX.XXXActivity'  label='XXX XXX' icon='res/drawable-mdpi/app_icon.png'
W/ResourceType( 9132): No known package when getting value for resource number 0
x01080049
ERROR getting 'android:icon' attribute: attribute is not a string value

This happens even though the file do exist inside this folder.

Here's the manifest. Again, replaced the real paths and names of the activities and app with XXX. I can assure you that the paths are correct as the app can run just fine.

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    package="XXX.XXX"
    android:installLocation="auto"
    android:versionCode="2"
    android:versionName="1.0" >

    <uses-sdk
        android:minSdkVersion="9"
        android:targetSdkVersion="19" />

    <supports-screens
        android:anyDensity="true"
        android:largeScreens="true"
        android:normalScreens="true"
        android:smallScreens="true"
        android:xlargeScreens="true" />

    <uses-permission android:name="com.android.launcher
                                   .permission.INSTALL_SHORTCUT" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android
                                   .permission.KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_SUPERUSER" />

    <!-- required for admob: -->
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

    <!-- required for in-app billing . -->
    <uses-permission android:name="com.android.vending.BILLING" />
    <!-- needed for payload of in-app billing -->
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS" />

    <application
        android:name="XXX.XXX.XXX"
        android:allowBackup="true"
        android:description="@string/app_description"
        android:hardwareAccelerated="true"
        android:icon="@drawable/app_icon"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >

        <activity
            android:name="XXX.XXXActivity"
            android:clearTaskOnLaunch="true"
            android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|
                                   screenLayout|uiMode|screenSize|
                                   smallestScreenSize"
            android:finishOnTaskLaunch="true"
            android:icon="@drawable/app_icon"
            android:label="@string/XXX"
            android:launchMode="singleTask"
            android:screenOrientation="fullSensor" >
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>
     ... (other activities and services)

The question

What is going on?

How do I overcome this?

Answer 1

If you are using any android system icons as activity icons (i.e. manifest contains <activity ... android:icon="@android:drawable/... ) , they could be the problem. If you are, try copying these icons into your project. Using them elsewhere should be no problem since badging doesn't touch those.

Answer 2

for me it was the fact that I tried to put transparent icons like this:

android:icon="@android:color/transparent"

Answer 3

In my case, the issue was simply that one of my app's dependencies had declared one of their activities to use android:icon="@color/black" in their manifest, instead of using a drawable. You don't get any compilation errors, and the apps works just fine. Only the aapt tool reports the error (or uploading to the Playstore). Note, libraries don't even need android:icon to be declared (they're not an installable app!) but AndroidStudio appears to default all projects to declare one in the manifest.

Answer 4

I know that there is correct answer, but i believe that my experience can help some one...

so i receive the same error:

ERROR getting 'android:icon' attribute: attribute is not a string value

but my problem wasn't related with icon!!!

The reason why I get this error was here:

android:label="@string/app_name"

My project has 3 different languages, but the main string.xml was without @string/app_name... and this was the reason!

so be careful!

Answer 5

I see you tried everything i guess. Try changing icon maybe? :) I mean only possiblity that left is your icon.

Answer 6

Try creating separate layouts for different screen sizes. Name the folders as res/layout and res/layout-large

Answer 7

I think I was hit by this issue (or something similar, not sure) when I tried to use an XML drawable as the icon (to add padding, etc. to the PNG image). I don't think your issue is the same though, since you seem to refer to the PNG file directly.

Some suggestions to try (to track down the problem by process of elimination):

• Remove res/drawable-mdpi/app_icon.png file and see if you got a different error.
• Remove all android:icon attributes in your manifest and see if you still got the error.
• Rename any other resource named app_icon in the project to something else.

If all else fail, I would probably start stripping out the external JARs and library projects (and probably temporarily commenting the code that refer to them) just to see if the error was triggered by any of them. Or maybe start fresh with a bare minimum AndroidManifest.xml and add your stuff one item at a time.

Another idea is to try to figure out why aapt is producing the error. Maybe download the source and try to debug it?

Answer 8

Have you tried turning your computer off and then on again?

Try removing android:icon="@drawable/app_icon from the Activity, as it will fall back to the icon specified in the Application.

Try not using proguard.

Answer 9

In may case, the problem is because I used @null for the value. Completely removing that fixes it. The same happens when you put @null for android:icon.

Answer 10

I was getting the same issue today and the @Rahl_Pryde's solution worked fine with a minor change.

In my case, the problem was an android transparent res color to some of my Activity icons. But changing to a local transparent color doesn't fixed the problem.

It fixed when changed the icon from a transparent color to a 2x2 transparent png.

Answer 11

In my case I have solved it by using always default res folders ie values, values-es, values-ca

Answer 12

In my case the problem was occuring because I changed package name before releasing and forgot about changing directory names. Project was still compiling but it was impossible to release it on google play.

Check in any java file if you have red underlined package name with error

'Package name xxx.yyy.zzz does not correspond to the file path 'xxx.eee.zzz'.

Answer 13

In my case, copied the png I use for my app icon into my "drawable-nodpi" folder and the Play store accepted my apk. If you don't have a nodpi folder, then maybe you just need to copy it out of your bucket size related drawable folders, and paste it into the base folder "drawable."

This seems to be a recent Play store requirement, since I've never seen this error before today. Take note of androiddeveloper's comment as well.