[Mitigated & Researching] Some Fully Managed devices unable to update Play Store version

[Lizzie]

October 26th, 2023

Issue:

Some Fully Managed devices running Android 11 and below have received a version of the Play Store that cannot self-update to the newest versions.

Work Profile devices, including both personally and company-owned devices, are not impacted.

Affected devices can still install and update other applications as normal.

This issue can be verified on the device, by long pressing the Play Store icon and tapping the info icon.  Impacted devices will have the Play Store version 35.2.19 or below.

Bugreports from these devices may also show entries as follows when attempting to update.

“PackageManager: Package com.android.vending signatures do not match previously installed version; ignoring!”

Current status:

A fix has been applied to prevent additional Fully Managed devices getting into this state.

We have also temporarily turned off the self-update ability for Play Store on the affected devices.

Engineering is currently researching a scaled solution to revert the Play Store to an updateable version.

Workarounds:

We don’t suggest applying any workarounds until we have exhausted the options for a scaled solution. However, if you have users who are experiencing issues now, please contact your EMM provider for support.

If needed, users can manually resolve the problem for their device by following these steps:

1. Long press the Play Store icon on the home screen.
2. Choose “App Info”
3. Tap the three dots in the top right corner 
4. Uninstall Updates -> Ok
5. Open the Play Store -> Menu Icon -> Settings -> Play Store version
6. Click Update Play Store

Message “A new version will be installed shortly”

     7. Close Play. A successful update should occur within the next few hours.

If DISALLOW_APPS_CONTROL or DISALLOW_UNINSTALL_APPS are set then the user will not be able to apply this manual workaround.

*Post updated, Oct 30th: workaround link to help guide removed and steps added directly to article

[jasonbayton]

Devil's advocate, but what's the reasoning behind it only impacting fully managed devices? What's happening on the backend that sees the version of Play offered up being presumably one signature for FM, another for WP? Or, if signature issues are more of a red herring than root cause, where do the differences lie that WP devices can work around this problem?

[Lizzie]

Hey @jasonbayton, 

It's a good question, I don't have the answer to this I afraid. 🤔 Our engineers are busy researching the scaled solution at the moment, but if I gather any more information I'll be sure to share as much as I can. 

Thank you,

Lizzie

[jeremy]

I've tested this behaviour with an app a few month ago for a client, and the app will refuse to install if the same app with a different signature is already installed in the other profile.

[jasonbayton]

Yeah, this is why I'm asking. The package is shared across profiles so I'm curious what's different about WP envs to FM

[jeremy]

Probably that the play store could not be updated to the broken version in case of WP, but that's just my idea

[ancalabrese]

@jasonbayton , work profiles are not impacted because the problem is casued at provisioning time. 

Work profile provisioning takes a different path that doesn't have the same conditions that cause this issue.

Hope this clarifies a bit.  

[jasonbayton]

Hi @ancalabrese!

Nope not really, this doesn't explain why a device Play Store app could have a differing signature between ownership types to cause an update signature mismatch.