App updates often failing to install on both F-Droid and Play Store

F-Droid

I press the Update button, it loads for a few seconds, then it shows the Update button again. No error is shown.

Play Store

A similar issue. Update is available, I press the Update button, download completes, installation begins, and installation fails; then a dialog pops up asking me to report the issue (send feedback) to Google.

Workaround

Workaround for both cases: uninstall, then install the new version, and finally restore backup.

It doesn’t happen for all apps. Recently I had to reinstall Syncthing-Fork, Proton VPN and some others.

Phone info

  • I’m running LineageOS 22.1 (recently upgraded from v21) on a Motorola G32 (devon).
  • I have the F-Droid Privileged Extension, manually installed by following this workaround (sideloading zip file doesn’t work).
  • I have Google Apps for Android 15, installed according to the LineageOS 22 installation instructions.
  • I have Magisk with Zygisk enabled, and the Play Integrity Fix module installed.

My previous LineageOS installation — which did not have this problem — had everything listed above, except the F-Droid Privileged Extension. So that is the primary suspect. But how do you uninstall it?

Any ideas?

this might happen with 1.22-alph0 only, read:

and Gentle updates postponed | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

and Gentle update API - F-Droid shows endless update when update is started while foreground service of the app to be updated is active (#2919) · Issues · F-Droid / Client · GitLab

@doug.silva you do run 1.22-alpha0, yes?

remove it… F-Droid can do unattended updates since 1.19: Unattended updates for everyone, 1.19 is here | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository no need for anything flashed

did you try https://calyxos.org/ yet?

you do run 1.22-alpha0, yes?

Negative. I’m running 1.21.1.

remove it… F-Droid can do unattended updates since 1.19

To remove it completely I just need to delete these files?

  • /system/priv-app/F-DroidPrivilegedExtension.apk
  • /system/etc/permissions/permissions_org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged.xml
  • /system/app/F-Droid.apk
  • /system/addon.d/80-fdroid.sh

did you try https://calyxos.org/ yet?

I’m planning to. I hear it comes with F-Droid as a system app, and that it locks the bootloader.

I’ve run a quick test to verify if this is the same issue I’m having. I haven’t removed the privileged extension yet.

  1. Uninstalled Syncthing-Fork v1.29, and reinstalled an older version (v1.28) through F-Droid.
  2. Opened the app, and completed the initial setup. This makes Syncthing run in the background (or foreground? foreground service?).
  3. Opened up F-Droid and attempted to update Syncthing-Fork to v1.29.

The update completed successfully. Syncthing was restarted in the process. :thinking:

I hate when this happens. Now I can’t reproduce the problem, at least not intentionally.

to test, go to Settings, Expert, disable Privileged Extension first

no idea, use the tool that installed it :person_shrugging:

I use Droid-ify and Aurora Store.