Xamarin Android app closes immediately after launching

I had the same error running release builds in the emulator (VS Android emulator). Turns out, we had disabled x86 as supported architecture.

I had a similar issue with a basic app when I started with Xamarin. The problem was with the apk file I was using. I picked it from my bin/Release folder while the path for the actual signed + published + zip-aligned app was at the project folder level outside the bin directory.

The signed.apk file in Release mode uses the debug keystore and so it is not possible to publish that, more info here.

Was a pretty silly miss by me, so in case someone else also has this issue please make sure you are picking the right apk file before diving into further debugging.