How to Fix “You uploaded an APK or Android App Bundle that was signed in debug mode” on Google Play

Play refuses debug-signed uploads outright. Engines default to debug signing until configured, so first submissions hit this constantly. Here is the correct release path.

How to fix it

1. Configure release signing

In your engine's publish settings (or Gradle's signingConfigs.release), point at your release/upload keystore with alias and passwords — and make the release build type use it.

2. Build the release artifact

Export/build the release AAB explicitly — 'it ran on my device' proves nothing about variant; debug is what development workflows produce by default.

3. Verify before upload

Check the signer: apksigner verify --print-certs (or keytool on the AAB) should show YOUR certificate details, not the androiddebugkey CN.

4. Enroll in Play App Signing

Let Play hold the app signing key with your keystore as upload key — future key mishaps become recoverable, and this rejection class stays gone.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every mobile error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.