Manually installing an updated APK fails with "signatures do not match the previously installed version"

Yes It is possible if somehow your old application is not removed 100% or its data is not removed.

Try:

adb uninstall "com.yourapp.yourapp"

If you don't know exactly what to put as replacement for "com.yourapp.yourapp", then you just open Android studio, Run your app while it is connected to a device and then look at Debug window.

It says:

 Waiting for device.
 Target device: samsung-sm_t531-xxxxxxxxx
 Uploading file
 local path: C:\Users\myapp\app\build\outputs\apk\myapp.apk
 remote path: /data/local/tmp/com.myapp.myapp
 Installing com.myapp.myapp
 DEVICE SHELL COMMAND: pm install -r "/data/local/tmp/com.myapp.myapp"
 pkg: /data/local/tmp/com.myapp.myapp
 Success

com.myapp.myapp in this case is the name of the package you must use to uninstall.

I had the same issue and the adb uninstall solution did not work for me.

What worked was

• On your device go to to Settings->Apps
• Select your app, and in the menu select "Uninstall for all users"

Even if I had previously uninstalled the app it was still in the list there.

To me, if the app is meant to be distributed, the adb solution is a no-go: you can't ask one's friend to have the android sdk installed on their machine !

The way to go here is to edit the AndroidManifest.xml and to increment the android:versionCodeattribute in the <manifest>tag (which is the root element).

This would update your installed application