How to generate signed and unsigned APK's using gradle?

I think buildTypes is a more suitable place than productFlavors.
You can extend your release build with replacing signingConfig.

buildTypes { release { .... signingConfig signingConfigs.release } releaseUnsigned.initWith(buildTypes.release) releaseUnsigned { signingConfig null } } 

Then for building both APK-files:

./gradlew assemble 

Or if you want only release builds

./gradlew assembleRelease assembleReleaseUnsigned or ./gradlew assR assRU 

If you really want to use only assembleRelease task, you can make this dependency

assembleRelease.dependsOn assembleReleaseUnsigned 

And build with just

./gradlew assembleRelease 

I know it's pretty old answer but it still might help someone gain your goal without adding extra flavour (even as in my case it might be challenging because many dependencies in the project).

android { signingConfigs { release { ... } } productFlavors { signed { signingConfig (checkUnsigned() ? null : signingConfigs.release) } } def checkUnsigned () { return project.hasProperty("unsigned") } 

In order to use it just use

gradle assembleRelease 

or

gradle assembleRelease '-Punsigned' 

for creating unsigned (quotes for CI, otherwise it might not be needed)

Disadvantage of the solution is just when you want to assemble several flavours in one line ie

gradle assembleRelease assembleDebug assembleRelease '-Punsigned' 

assembleRelease checks all properties in command line, so first assembleRelease will be callse also with param '-Punsigned' I resolved this CI issue by using 2 commands - one for signed, other for unsigned versions

gradle assembleRelease assembleOtherFlavour '-Punsigned' gradle assembleDebug assembleRelease assembleOtherFlavour 

The answer you linked to is correct - if your chosen variant (i.e. build type + flavor combination) is not using a "signing ready" signing config, gradle will create an unsigned APK.

So you can define a setup like this:

android { signingConfigs { release { ... } } productFlavors { signed { signingConfig signingConfigs.release // defined above } unsigned {} // use the default options } } 

Then running ./gradlew :app:assembleRelease will create your APKs:

app/build/outputs/apk ├── app-signed-release.apk ├── app-signed-release-unaligned.apk └── app-unsigned-release-unsigned.apk 

It didn't work for me with defining new buildType. But it works with debug/release:

 buildTypes { release { signingConfig null } debug { signingConfig null } } 

this will create unsigned apks