What causes "Failed to install Android SDK" in tauri-apps/tauri?

Run the sdkmanager command printed in the error manually to see the full failure output

Failed to install Android SDK

Error message

Failed to install Android SDK

What it means

The CLI successfully launched sdkmanager to install platform-tools, platforms;android-{SDK_VERSION} and ndk;{NDK_VERSION}, but the command exited with a non-zero status. The underlying sdkmanager output is printed above the error; typical causes are unaccepted licenses, network/proxy failures, disk space, or an incompatible/missing Java runtime.

Source

Thrown at crates/tauri-cli/src/mobile/android/mod.rs:582

          crate::error::bail!("Skipping Android Studio SDK installation. Please go through the manual setup process described in the documentation: https://tauri.app/start/prerequisites/#android");
        }
      }

      log::info!("Running sdkmanager to install platform-tools, android-{SDK_VERSION} and ndk-{NDK_VERSION} on {}...", default_android_home.display());
      let status = Command::new(&sdk_manager_path)
        .arg(format!("--sdk_root={}", default_android_home.display()))
        .arg("--install")
        .arg("platform-tools")
        .arg(format!("platforms;android-{SDK_VERSION}"))
        .arg(format!("ndk;{NDK_VERSION}"))
        .status()
        .map_err(|error| Error::CommandFailed {
          command: format!("{} --sdk_root={} --install platform-tools platforms;android-{SDK_VERSION} ndk;{NDK_VERSION}", sdk_manager_path.display(), default_android_home.display()),
          error,
        })?;

      if !status.success() {
        crate::error::bail!("Failed to install Android SDK");
      }
    }

    std::env::set_var("ANDROID_HOME", default_android_home);
  }

  Ok(())
}

fn ensure_ndk(non_interactive: bool) -> Result<()> {
  // re-evaluate ANDROID_HOME
  let android_home = std::env::var_os("ANDROID_HOME")
    .or_else(|| std::env::var_os("ANDROID_SDK_ROOT"))
    .map(PathBuf::from)
    .context("Failed to locate Android SDK")?;

  // check NDK_HOME
  let mut installed_ndks = if let Some(ndk_home) = std::env::var_os("NDK_HOME") {

View on GitHub (pinned to 52e4b6e71d)

Solutions

Run the sdkmanager command printed in the error manually to see the full failure output
Accept licenses: `yes | sdkmanager --licenses` then rerun the tauri command
Fix network/proxy or Java issues (install JDK 17+, ensure JAVA_HOME is valid), free disk space, then retry
On CI, cache the SDK directory so the install step is skipped after the first run

Example fix

# before
error: Failed to install Android SDK
# after
yes | $ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --licenses
tauri android dev

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

# pre-accept licenses so sdkmanager cannot fail on them:
yes | sdkmanager --licenses >/dev/null 2>&1
df -h "$ANDROID_HOME" | tail -1   # NDK/platform need ~2GB+ free

Try / catch

#!/usr/bin/env bash
for i in 1 2 3; do
  tauri android build --ci && exit 0
  echo "retry $i: sdkmanager install failed - check licenses/network"
done
exit 1

Prevention

Accept licenses (`yes | sdkmanager --licenses`) as an early CI step
Verify JDK 17+ and JAVA_HOME before building; sdkmanager dies on wrong Java
Reserve enough disk and cache the SDK directory in CI to avoid repeated downloads

When it happens

Trigger: `sdkmanager --sdk_root=... --install platform-tools platforms;android-X ndk;Y` returning non-zero — e.g. licenses not accepted, HTTP 403/timeout behind a proxy, 'Could not determine java version', or insufficient disk space.

Common situations: Fresh CI machines that never ran `sdkmanager --licenses`; corporate proxies blocking dl.google.com; JAVA_HOME pointing to an unsupported JDK; full disk in Docker builds.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of tauri-apps/tauri@52e4b6e71d (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/33f8bf5823e47bae. Report an issue: GitHub.