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Dainy Jose
Dainy Jose

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🐞 Troubleshooting 16 KB Page Size Issues

#mobile #development #android #programming

📖 This article is a continuation of my previous post: Understanding Google Play’s 16 KB Page Size Requirement for Android Apps.

If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend starting there for the full context.

Even after updating your SDK/NDK, you might hit issues when testing.
Here are the most common errors and fixes:

❌ Error: INSTALL_FAILED_INVALID_APK: unsupported ELF page size

Cause: Your native libraries (.so files) are built only for 4 KB pages, not 16 KB.

Fix:

  • Update NDK to r26+ (older versions don’t support 16 KB)**. 
sdkmanager "ndk;26.1.10909125"
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  • In android/gradle.properties, set: 
ANDROID_NDK_VERSION=26.1.10909125
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  • Clean and rebuild: 
./gradlew clean assembleRelease
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❌ Error: ELF header missing or corrupted when checking with readelf

Cause: The .so file you extracted isn’t valid or was compressed.

Fix:

  • Re-extract from the APK using: 
unzip app-release.apk -d extracted_apk
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  • Navigate to lib/arm64-v8a/ before running readelf.

❌ Error: App runs on emulator but crashes on physical device (Android 15)

Cause: Some third-party SDKs or libraries bundled in your app may not yet support 16 KB page sizes.

Fix:

  • Identify the crashing .so file from logs (adb logcat).

  • Update the dependency to the latest version (check release notes for 16 KB support).

  • If no update exists, contact the library’s maintainer or temporarily remove it.

❌ Error: Your app must support 16 KB page sizes in Google Play Console (even after rebuild)

Cause: Google Play still detects non-compliant native libraries inside your AAB.

Fix:

  • Run a full check with: 
bundletool build-apks --bundle=app-release.aab --output=output.apks
unzip output.apks -d apks
find apks -name "*.so" | xargs -I {} readelf -h {} | grep "Page size"
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  • Confirm all .so files show 16384.

  • If one still shows 4096, update/rebuild that library.

✅ Best Practice: Always use the latest versions of:

  • Android Gradle Plugin (8.5+)

  • NDK (26+)

  • compileSdkVersion & targetSdkVersion = 35

This ensures forward compatibility with Android 15+ and avoids Play Store rejection.

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