IssueTracker

Tested and could not run on the following
Samsung Galaxy S7 - Android 7.0.0
Samsung Galaxy Edge S6 - Android 6.0.1
Samsung Tab 3 - Android 6.0.1

Tested and worked on
LG G4 - Android 6.0.0

I had the same issue using a Huawei, Galaxy S5 and S6.
I re built the app and change the version number. After publishing again, it magically solved the issue.
But i still want to know the root cause of this?

Same issue on a Galaxy S6 running Android 6.x. Phone must be restarted before the app will recognize that an obb file is present, even with read/write external permissions enabled.

same issue here... phab2Pro in 6.0.1

Same issue, Galaxy S5 Active.  Maybe a rundown of how others are working around this issue would be helpful?

same here, Galaxy S7

Same issue for LG G3

Same here, pretty much any device. A restart is required before it will work.

Same issue for Galaxy Tab S3 with Android 7.0.

These are the permissions of the OBB file right after installation:

# ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw---- 1 root sdcard_rw 32 2017-07-02 13:04 main.33.de.draisberghof.pppwidget3.obb

And these are the permissions after rebooting:

 # ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw---- 1 u0_a188 sdcard_rw 32 2017-07-02 13:04 main.33.de.draisberghof.pppwidget3.obb

It's obvious, no?

This is a horrible situation. Android dev team already knows this is a real issue that has been around since 2013-2014 yet it is still around 4 years later.

What's more, it's a serious issue that requires people to restart their phones for the games to run (such a ridiculous request). The only available/horrible alternative is to download the OBB manually in the game, something that is largely convoluted and undocumented especially when we're talking about Unity.

Disappointing stuff really...

Not an excuse but, downloading obb manually is the default scenario, and installing it along with apk is a convenience "feature" that never really worked. You should always check in case obb was deleted, and older Markets I think might not even download it in the first place.

For large developers that's fine, but for a smaller developer that kind of
bandwidth can be tough to pay for.  Also whenever I download a game and
open it, them it starts downloading again I am a bit annoyed.  This problem
shouldn't be a difficult thing to fix, it's fairly straightforward as to
what is happening.

On Jul 23, 2017 9:19 AM, <buganizer-system@google.com> wrote:

Having the same issue with Android 6.0.1 Samsung Note 4

Can you provide the below requested information to better understand the issue:

Steps to reproduce
What steps do others need to take in order to reproduce the issue themselves?
Can you please provide some applications name which has OBB files with them.

Frequency
How frequently does this issue occur? (e.g 100% of the time, 10% of the time)

- Steps to reproduce

0. Upload the app with targetSdkVersion=23 and APK Expansion files to Google Play Store via Developer Console.
1. Download the app and APK Expansion files from Google Play Store on Android 6.0
2. Launch the app and access the obb file. (XAPK validation failed error is shown to consumers)
3. Exception raised: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /storage/emulated/0/Android/obb/<package-name>/main.<expansion-version>.<packag-name>.obb: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
  3-1. Checking the file and directory owner, it is "root".
4. Reboot the device.
5. The file and directory owner is changed to app-specific user, e.g."u0_a131".
6. The app can access obb files correctly without runtime-permission.


- Application Name

Bumpex 2 -- (made by Edhash Games)

- Frequency
100% using Galaxy S7 and Samsung Note 4 all Android 6

Frequency here:
100% on all Android 6 devices and also on my only Android 7 device. This is a very reliable bug.

See post #11 for obb file owner/permissions before and after reboot.

Hi,

We are also experiencing this bug on both Android 6 and Android 7.

As another commenter expressed in the previous issue opened regarding this (https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37075181), "it's a pity, because android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE considered as "Dangerous Permission" and presents scary prompt to user about photos & stuff." I think that this should be considered a very high priority bug, as it has a direct, tangible, negative impact on all apps that require expansion files.

Popping in to say that I'm also having the issue with a Samsung Galaxy S6 and several other Galaxy phones. I just spent the last 3 days troubleshooting this issue tihnking it was related to another plugin I had just installed, only to have the issue persist after rolling back to a working build that was 2 weeks old. This is a huge issue. Please.

Thank you for reporting this issue. We have shared this with our engineering team and will update this issue with more information as it becomes available.

This problem effects probably more than 80% of the apps on playstore that are larger than 100mb. We have to download the files manually after the installation or ask for read&write external permission.

After some market inspection, I can say that the lost conversion rate is around 5-10% just because of that issue. That means billions of dollars in lost revenue for both developers and the app store owners (Google).

  After 4(four) years, google realized that and decided to fix it and I find this funny, luck play a huge role in success.

  Google Play Store was my target platform for the company and now, it,s the Apple App Store.

The same issue on Samsung Galaxy Tab A (2016) SM-T585  Android 7. Build: NRD90M.T585XXU2BQE4

Permissions after install:
-rw-rw---- 1 root sdcard_rw 27515377 2017-09-04 10:13 main.4002050.com.absolutist.timegap.obb

The issue on Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Android 7 Build:NRD90M.G9350ZHU2BQH4

The issue on following tested devices:

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Android 7 Build:NRD90M.G9350ZHU2BQH4

Samsung Galaxy S7 Android 6.0.1 Build:NMB29M.G930VVRU4API3

LeTV X900+ Android 6.0.1

Hi, same issue here on Samsung Galaxy S7.
Also if there is a possible workaround to downgrade target SDK level of published apk, then please let me know.
Thank you.

Issue can be reproduced on Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+.
Nexus 6 running 7.1.1 had no issue, Nexus 6P running 8.0 (Oreo) has no issue.
None of these phones were rooted, running stock OS apart from Samsung.
Please confirm, we can reproduce this issue on S8 running 7.0 builds.
Kindly confirm this can be reproduced or not.
We can reproduce it 100% of the time.
Restarting phone solves the problem 100% of the time.
Last which was marked "fixed" and people were claiming in 7.0 solved the issue may be specific cases with phones that had no issues at all.

BUMP ! Having this issue as well.

also having this issue. S7.

I can confirm that this issue exists on the Samsung Note 8. Rebooting resets the OBB file's permissions and it can be used by the application. As none of the rest of my application requires the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission, this is a problem.

Also have this issue. WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission is an ugly workaround which should not be needed for this.

We have the same problem here:
Samsung S7, Android 7.0

After installing from the Google play store (internal test channel):
at sdcard/Android/obb/com.companyname.productname:
-rw-rw---- 1 root sdcard_rw 36272558 2018-04-04 16:43 main.961.com.companyname.productname.obb

obb file cannot be accessed.

After reboot:
at sdcard/Android/obb/com.companyname.productname:
-rw-rw---- 1 u0_a947 sdcard_rw 36272558 2018-04-04 16:43 main.961.com.companyname.productname.obb

obb file can be accessed.

If I give the 'Storage' permission before starting up the app (we skip the permissions dialog) and without reboot it does work.

We'll probably go with requesting the 'Storage' permission...

The only fix that could potentially retroactively fix it for all versions, is if Google Play lifted the limit of the APK being 100mb and then we wouldn't need OBB files.

Look, Google, you want us to take the runtime permissions seriously and provide context etc.

So what is the context here?

Should I write: "We are asking for this permission because Android is a buggy mess, and Google refuses to let go of OBB files and won't let us upload single APK files as literally every other store".

How are we supposed to:
1. Provide a great experience to the users.
2. Implement permissions according to you guidelines.
3. And have the apps work properly on as many devices as possible?

Lift the APK restrictions, let OBB files die, make every developers life easier and your users happier.

I can confirm im having the exact issue and it's just destroy your mood to do games anymore.

Please take out the 100mb limit and get rid of OBB.

I've solved it asking for permissions at runtime. Android 6.
Thanks for the thread, it helped us.

Also has this.
Please take out the 100mb limit and get rid of OBB.

Also developing an Android game, and running into this issue. Asking for external write permission is al ugly fix for an ugly bug.

I guess I will just inform users to restart their phones... at least this way I don't have to ask for a dangerous permission (according to Google itself).

I don't know if this is fixed in newer Androids and that's why Google is not paying attention to it, but it's not a matter of it being fixed in the latest version.

It's a bug that affects users running Android 6 and (somewhat less frequently) Android 7. 6 and 7 are installed in approximately 50% of the available devices.

This means for the majority of Android devices out there, there is a high potential that the .obb file and folder will be set (incorrectly) as root, until the user reboots the device.

As long as these versions are around in a significant percentage (which more or less means... forever?), we are stuck asking for permissions we do not need "just in case".

It seems READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is needed just to be able to mount the .obb and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is needed if we need to download the .obb ourselves.

These have scary prompts. When users ask me "why do I need to give access to my photos just to play your game", I don't know what to tell them. There is no "fixing" this in the OS, even if it's fixed in the latest version it doesn't matter, the damage is done.

Lift the limit on APKs and kill OBB files. It's the only solution and luckily it seems like a simple one.

Having this issue on Samsung Galaxy S5
Funny thing is, "force internal" (in unity build settings) doesn't solve it.
It still needs user to restart the phone, and half of the first scene's resources are not loaded. That' means there is no way to tell the user to do it.

For unity, there is a not-so-nasty workaround, to tell the user to restart his/her phone:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/apk-with-expansion-file-obb-fails-to-load-the-second-scene-until-the-phone-has-been-restarted.465714/page-2#post-4132885

Still, wish there was a better way

Please just drop obb from Android completely and raise Google Play limits to those of the App Store.... (we need 500mb+ desperately, some need 1-2gb...)
obb is an absolute mess that is falling apart, barely supported with bugs in every OEM's Android variant, heck, even the jobb tool itself is falling apart on FAT16 issues and is an unmaintained mess.

Please just save us already end the nightmare that is supporting OBB on android that is at least 75% of all problems for developers of sizeable games.

I just had the same issue on a Nokia 3 with Android 9 on it, last update july 5th 2019 (core version 3.18.119+ june 25 2019).
I recently updated a game, I package in UE4, to meet recent 64bit google requirement. I uninstalled a running version (v5) I had on my phone and installed the updated version. After making some tests on my updated version I wanted to rollback to my older v5. But now this older version does generate the XAPK Validation File error on first run. Then after rebooting the phone it works fine again.
What's really intriguing is that I perfectly remember that I did not face this issue, installing this 5th version or the previous 4 straight into my phone or using the Playstore. Always Ok on first run. This was 7 months ago, back in January 2019.

We'll die before they fix this. It's been like this for half a decade already. Clearly no intention of fixing it.

Move it, Roach!

Hello, your comments were flagged for review. We understand that you’re frustrated, but please keep your language civil. If you continue to post abusive statements to the Google Issue Tracker, we will be forced to take action by removing your ability to make any comments or changes on the Google Issue Tracker.

We are closing this bug as Obsolete. If you still think this issue is reproducible and relevant in the latest Android release then please open a new bug and add a new bug report and other relevant information and reference this bug for context.

File use for ff

Please obb resources file my gmail send me