Error: ADB exited with exit code 1 Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_VERSION_DOWNGRADE]

Question

I'm using last version of flutter and dart. First I installed my app from play store and after that I've attached my device(Samsung S8+ with android 9) for debugging, it's shown me this error:

Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_VERSION_DOWNGRADE]

After some searches I've done theses works:

• uninstall from all user the currently installed copy

• adb uninstall "Package name"

• downgrade android:version from manifest.xml

and they haven't worked: I realized my app version from app manager and I would edit version version: 3.8.0+62 -> version: 3.11.0+66 from pubspec.yaml , it's shown me this:

signatures do not match previously installed version; ignoring!

I think the previous apk is already installed but it doesn't exist in system App manager.

Other projects working fine.

What should I do?

Answer 1

Following the below steps did it for me. Hopefully this will help others.

---

Possible Solution

On the terminal, run following commands (ensuring adb is on $PATH ):

$ adb uninstall [package_name] 

[package_name] here would be in the form com.domain.appname .

$ adb install -r -d [path_to_debug_apk] 

-d allows version downgrade for debug builds.

-r is to replace existing application and may be redundant if the uninstall succeeded in completely purging previous installed copy. I was just a bit paranoid and used it.

See $ adb help for more details.

It is then possible to attach to this debug build from terminal using flutter attach , and get the debug log on terminal just like flutter run .

I believe now that it should be possible to execute flutter run too after the first uninstall step without errors.

---

The error message and some back-story

I had a similar problem with flutter run while trying to debug an app while I had a release version of it installed on the device already.

I got an adb error stating:

Error: ADB exited with exit code 1
Performing Streamed Install

adb: failed to install /path_to_project/build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app.apk: 
Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_VERSION_DOWNGRADE]

Error launching application on [deviceName]

Like in your case, uninstalling the app from application manager on the phone did not remove this error.

Answer 2

错误（失败 [INSTALL_FAILED_VERSION_DOWNGRADE]）我只是清除缓存（应用程序管理器）并卸载应用程序，然后再次构建它，它对我有用。

Answer 3

If you are facing this problem and using physical device for development, problem is probably caused because you installed a version that you build and remove it later.

Solution is simple, for my case, I just installed another build of my app and then go back to android studio and ran the flutter, again synced all the data, and I continued to develop.

Answer 4

This is what worked for me

adb shell pm uninstall "packagename"

and then install the app using adb or

flutter install