SDK Location not found Android Studio + Gradle

creating local.properties file in the root directory solved my issue I somehow lost this file after pulling from GitHub

this is how my local.properties file looks like now:

## This file is automatically generated by Android Studio.
# Do not modify this file -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE ERASED!
#
# This file must *NOT* be checked into Version Control Systems,
# as it contains information specific to your local configuration.
#
# Location of the SDK. This is only used by Gradle.
# For customization when using a Version Control System, please read the
# header note.
#Sat Feb 06 11:53:03 EST 2016

sdk.dir=/Users/****/Library/Android/sdk

I had very similar situation (had a project on another machine and cloned it to my laptop and saw the same issue) and I looked in it.

Error message was coming from Sdk.groovy of Android gradle plugin: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/build/+/master/gradle/src/main/groovy/com/android/build/gradle/internal/Sdk.groovy

By looking at code, its findLocation needs to set androidSdkDir variable and there are only three ways to do it:

  • create local.properties file and have either sdk.dir or android.dir line.
  • have ANDROID_HOME environment variable defined.
  • System.getProperty("android.home") - I'm not sure how it works, but it seems like a Java thing.

While your Android Studio knows that the SDK is at that place, I doubt that Android Studio is passing that information to gradle and thus we're seeing that error.

I created local.properties file at the project root and put the following line and it compiled the code successfully.

sdk.dir = /Applications/Android Studio.app/sdk/