Android - App not installed as package conflicts with an existing package

Question

My application is published in Google Play store. Some of the users were unable to install the app due to below error.

Google Play Error

I've asked the user to install the APK manually but he got the below error.

App not installed as package conflicts with an existing package

Can someone advice me what's wrong on my app?

Answer 1

You need to provide an APK that has a higher versionCode and is signed with the same key as the play store version.

If you enabled Google Play App Signing and did not upload your own signing key, then you are unable to provide your own APKs as app updates to your users. In that case all you have is an "upload key" while google has the actuall signing key which is used to finally sign the app.

This will lead to the problem that you provide an APK with the same package ID but with a different signing key. In that case, Android will refuse to install the app due to a duplicate package ID conflict.