Troubleshooting

Common Android Publishing Issues

The Keystore / Signing Key

Keystores in Android are storage mechanisms for security certificates to prevent others from updating your app on the Google Play store. Your keystore contains a private key that is unique to your app.

Duplicated apps within an account (Duplicate Your Project) maintain the same keystore as the original app. Apps copied from a Share link do not have the same keystore.

You must save your Android keystore and password somewhere safe. Google will not provide it for you if you lose it.

If your app was deleted, and you have not downloaded a copy of your keystore, it is permanently lost. We strongly recommend you use Google's App Signing Service so that you can update your published apps if your keystore is lost.

Exporting / importing a keystore to your app

Export keystore from a Thunkable project

A Thunkable project will not have a keystore until either a keystore is imported or the project is downloaded as an Android app for the first time.

If you make a copy of a Thunkable project, the copy will have a different keystore to the original project.

To export a keystore from a Thunkable project:

Click the gear icon of on the left hand side of your Design tab your app in upper left corner to bring up App Settings
Scroll to Android Keystore and click Export Keystore

Alias and Password

In the dialog that comes up, you will see the keystore's password and a button that says Export Keystore. You will need this password to import your keystore to other projects. You can change the password at this stage by editing the password in the text box.

The default keystore alias used by Thunkable will be AndroidKey.

Click OK to save the .keystore file to your computer.

Import keystore to Thunkable

Importing a keystore to a Thunkable project will override its existing keystore. Make sure you don't need this project's keystore to publish an update to your app before continuing!

To import a keystore to a Thunkable project:

Click the gear icon of on the left hand side of your Design tab your app in upper left corner to bring up App Settings
Scroll to Android Keystore and click Import Keystore

Enter the password and select the .keystore file you previously saved to your computer into the Import Keystore dialog.

Resetting Your Keystore

Create a new project in Thunkable for exporting the Keystore zip and .pem file.

You will then need to download the Android App Bundle to create a keystore and .pem file.

To download your Android App Bundle (AAB) file:

Within your Thunkable project, click the Publish and Download icon.
Select Publish Android from the drop-down menu.
A publishing modal is provided to guide you through the publication process.
Enter the email address you want the app download link sent to.
Click Send.

You will not need to do anything with the AAB file that is sent to your email, you may delete it.

You will then need to download your Keystore Zip. This is a compressed version of your app's Android Keystore.

You can download this from your project settings under Keystore Zip:

Save that zip file to a location where you can easily find it.

From here, you will need to go to your . Go to Setup > App Signing and click on Request upload key resetGoogle Play Console

For the reason for resetting your upload key, select I lost my upload key. In step 3, upload the .pem file from the Thunkable project you created earlier. The .pem file is located in your Keystore Zip.

After you have selected the .pem file, click Request

You should immediately receive an email from Google Play Console letting you know that they have received your request and the date the new key will become valid.

Please note: you will need to wait until the new key is valid to update your app.

However, you can now update the key in your existing app.

In the existing app, click on Import Keystore and then upload the Keystore zip from your new project into the existing project.

Manage Your Own App Signing

If you don't want Google to manage your App Signing, you can do so yourself. This is not necessary.

In Thunkable:

Download your Keystore Zip

You will need to download your Keystore Zip. This is a compressed version of your app's Android Keystore.

You can download this from your project settings under Keystore Zip:

We recommend creating a new folder on your computer. Download your AAB file and your Keystore Zip to this new folder. That way, the correct AAB file and Keystore Zip will be together.