Upgrade Gradle for Android

The Google Mobile Ads Android SDK 22.4.0 added a <property> element in its Android manifest. Building against this version or higher requires using Gradle 6.7.1 or higher and Android Gradle plugin 4.2.0 or higher. This guide instructs you on how to make sure your Unity editor is compatible.

Prerequisites

Complete the Get started guide. Make sure to:

  • Set Minimum API level to 21
  • Set Target API level to 33 or higher
  • Enable Custom Main Gradle Template and Custom Gradle Properties Template settings

Unity 2022.2 and later

Unity 2022.2 and higher comes with newer versions of Gradle for Android by default. No additional action is required to support Google Mobile Ads Android SDK 22.4.0.

Unity 2022.1 and earlier

Unity 2022.2 and earlier use an older version of Gradle for Android which is not supported by Google Mobile Ads Android SDK 22.4.0. The following steps show how to upgrade to the minimally required Gradle version based on your build process:

  1. Enable custom Gradle templates

    Go to Project Settings > Player > Android > Publishing Settings > Build, and select:

    • Custom Base Gradle Template

  2. Modify Base Gradle Template

    Open the Assets/Plugins/Android/baseProjectTemplate.gradle file and set the dependencies to use Gradle build tools 4.2.0.

      allprojects {
      buildscript {
          dependencies {
              classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.2.0'
              **BUILD_SCRIPT_DEPS**
          }
      }
  }
  ...

  3. Update Gradle

    Update your Gradle version to 6.7.1. The steps for this are slightly different depending on whether you export your project as an Android Studio project as part of your build process.

    Unity Integrated Builds

    Install Gradle

    Download Gradle version 6.7.1.

    Set Gradle path in Unity

    In Unity, open Unity Preferences > External Tools and set the custom Gradle path.

    Android Studio Builds

    Export the Android Studio project

    Open the File > Build Settings menu, enable Export Project is checked, and press the Export button. Once exported, open the project in Android Studio.

    Update Gradle wrapper

    Open the ./gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties file and set the distributionUrl to use Gradle 6.7.1.

    distributionBase=GRADLE_USER_HOME
distributionPath=wrapper/dists
zipStoreBase=GRADLE_USER_HOME
zipStorePath=wrapper/dists
distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-6.7.1-bin.zip