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Release keystore file not found

Android / Gradle · last reviewed 2026-11-10

The error looks like this

Execution failed for task ':app:validateSigningRelease'.
> Keystore file '/Users/dev/app/android/app/release.keystore' not found for signing config 'release'.

Why it happens

The path in storeFile does not point to a keystore on this machine — common on CI, where the keystore is not in the repo.

How to fix it

  1. Locally: put the .keystore in android/app and set MYAPP_UPLOAD_STORE_FILE to its file name.
  2. CI: store the keystore as a base64 secret and decode it before the build: echo "$KEYSTORE_B64" | base64 --decode > android/app/upload.keystore
  3. Run releasemedic scan to check the signing config.

Not sure this is your error? Let ReleaseMedic read the whole log

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$ npx releasemedic log build.log

Or pipe a build straight in: cd android && ./gradlew bundleRelease 2>&1 | npx releasemedic log -

Catch it before you build

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