Failure to install Android APK "App not installed as package appears to be invalid"

[PureTryOut]

I'm trying to install the Android APK (I'm just assuming it's an Android package rather than an Alpine Linux one which also uses the .apk extension 😜) on an aarch64 device running Android 13 (CalyxOS to be exact). However it fails to do so mentioning the package appears to be invalid.

(sorry for the large picture size, not sure how to make GitHub show it smaller and I'm too lazy to resize the image locally)

[MayaPosch]

Was the NymphCast Player app previously installed on the phone?

I cannot reproduce the issue on my Xiaomi phone with Android 13, with APK sideloading enabled. I'm not sure CalyxOS does anything special in this regard, or has special demands for APKs? Does the app from the Google app store install without issues?

[PureTryOut]

It was not no. Clean install basically.

CalyxOS has no special demands for APKs. At runtime there is the issue of no Google Play Services (and I have MicroG disabled) but that isn't a blocker to install APKs. I did not realize NymphCast was on the Google Play Store though. I would try that one but the app I'm using to install stuff from there (Aurora Store) has issues currently preventing me from doing so. Have you considered putting it on F-Droid?

[PureTryOut]

I managed to install the release on the Google Play Store, that one works just fine. Not sure what's different about the GitHub release.

[MayaPosch]

The APK attached to the v0.1 release does appear to be somewhat older at least. I'll make sure to put up a new APK with the v0.2-alpha0 pre-release.

I have considered other app stores as well, yes. I put it on the Play Store first because I already had an account there, but releasing it on other app stores is on the TODO list, possibly with the v0.2 release cycle.

[FengshenNL]

Hello there, sorry for resurrecting this 3 years later.
I am running into the same issue with the apk. It works fine for NCS, but I need the player.
I checked the Play Store, but I can't seem to find it in my search results for "nymphcast". Was it taken down?

[AllergicMushroom]

Hello, I also cannot install the APK through obtainium on a GrapheneOS device (Pixel 9A). Only error I have is "Some errors occurred" and "Invalid [NymphCast]". I also tried by launching the raw APK, and it doesn't install either with error "App not installed". Note that I do not have Google Services enabled nor MicroG.

I also cannot find the app on PlayStore / Aurora Store.

[MayaPosch]

@FengshenNL @AllergicMushroom The PlayStore listing was sadly pulled after Google required a government ID from me to maintain my developer account, which I didn't want to comply with. The APKs will always be available here on GitHub, however, and alternative app stores may be an option in the future.

Did either of you try to install the Player APK from the GitHub release? Please provide the full details of the Android version, etc. so that I can have a look at this. Thanks :)

[AllergicMushroom]

Hello @MayaPosch , thank you for your message. I totally understand not complying with Google's stupid behavior.

I tried installing the NymphPlayer apk from the github releases. My phone is a Pixel 9A, with the latest version of GrapheneOS based on Android 16. Kernel version is 6.1.163.

If you need more information, please tell me which information you need specifically. I don't know what could be useful for debugging.

[MayaPosch]

@AllergicMushroom Thank you for your understanding :)

My current guess is that Google added some requirement for Android 16 that the Player APK doesn't comply with yet. I'll test it in a virtual Android 16 device and report back. It's been a few months since I did Android development, but I'll try to at least get a diagnosis this week.

[MayaPosch]

It appears that the new 16 KB Page Size requirement is the cause here: https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/page-sizes

That also explains why NCS does work on current Android, since it was built against a newer NDK that already included 16 kB page size support.

I'll put a new NC Player build online as soon as possible, after I confirm that this is indeed the sole cause.

[MayaPosch]

Quick update: trying to build a new version of NCP for Android with a newer NDK version 28 for the 16 kB page size support resulted in me having to update the Poco dependency, which led to a few more things breaking that needed fixing. Currently Qt is throwing an error on llvm-readobj during APK assembly that makes little sense to me as it's apparently an internal Qt thing.

Possibly using an even newer NDK and/or newer Qt IDE/SDK will help here, but it's going to take a bit longer to make a new build work, it seems. Sorry about that.

[AllergicMushroom]

Hello @MayaPosch, do you have any news on this front? I should have some time to test in the following weeks.

[MayaPosch]

@AllergicMushroom - No major updates on my end, but thanks for reminding me. I'll see about giving it another try the coming days, and hopefully do get it to assemble that APK :)

I'll post an update as soon as I got any progress here.