android - Interstitial Admob ads: "IllegalStateException: Only fullscreen activities can request orientation"

Question

Background

I have an app with Admob SDK used in it, to show Interstitial ads (full screen ads).

Reccently Google has updated the SDK, along with many other things (build tools, gradle plugin, IDE, etc...), including admob (firebase ads).

compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ads:11.4.2'

The problem

After updating, I noticed that whenever the app tries to show an Interstitial ad, it crashes.

The crash log is as such:

10-28 14:01:01.394 4523-4523/... I/Ads: Ad opening.
10-28 14:01:01.400 1606-2154/? E/ActivityManager: Activity Manager Crash. UID:10080 PID:4523 TRANS:63
                                                  java.lang.IllegalStateException: Only fullscreen activities can request orientation
                                                      at com.android.server.am.ActivityRecord.setRequestedOrientation(ActivityRecord.java:2189)
                                                      at com.android.server.am.ActivityManagerService.setRequestedOrientation(ActivityManagerService.java:4975)
                                                      at android.app.IActivityManager$Stub.onTransact(IActivityManager.java:1101)
                                                      at com.android.server.am.ActivityManagerService.onTransact(ActivityManagerService.java:2927)
                                                      at android.os.Binder.execTransact(Binder.java:697)


10-28 14:01:01.403 4523-4523/... D/AndroidRuntime: Shutting down VM
10-28 14:01:01.406 4523-4523/... E/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{.../com.google.android.gms.ads.AdActivity}: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Only fullscreen activities can request orientation

Thing is that it worked fine before. Now I'm not sure what causes it to occur.

Searching the web, I didn't see anything that talks about "Only fullscreen activities can request orientation" .

What I had in the manifest, is something a bit old, that might not be needed anymore:

    <activity
        android:name="com.google.android.gms.ads.AdActivity"
        android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenLayout|uiMode|screenSize|smallestScreenSize"
        android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent"/>

I say it's probably not needed, because i can't see it anymore in the tutorials, even though I remember I did in the past:

• https://developers.google.com/admob/android/quick-start
• https://developers.google.com/admob/android/interstitial

What I've tried

1. I tried to remove the manifest entry. Still same issue.

2. I tried to set the theme to be "@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen" by force, but it also didn't help.

3. I even thought that it might be because I currently have Android 8.1, but when I tried using the app from the play store, I noticed it worked just fine, without crashes.

4. I tried to go back to as far as version 11.2.2 of admob and use gradle v 2.3.3 , but it also didn't help.

5. When trying on an emulator with Android 7.0 , it worked fine with latest versions of everything, and removal of the whole manifest activity tag.

6. I tried to use this in gradle file, instead of what I used :

   compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:11.4.2'

Still crashed on my device (Nexus 5x with Android 8.1) yet didn't crash on emulator.

7. Finally, I tried to run the app on emulator with Android 8.1, and it crashed just as on the real device.

8. Reported about this to Google Admob team, as well as Android issue tracker. I hope they will answer me about this.

The questions

What could be the cause to this issue?

Is it because of Android 8.1 ? If so, how come the older version of the app worked fine? I tried to revert there a lot of versions to old ones, yet it still crashed.

And, most importantly, how can I solve it?

Answer 1

EDIT

Now a newer admob version is available. I confirm that using the latest releases (15.0.1 or newer) the issue doesn't appear anymore, so you can use the latest version of Admob

com.google.firebase:firebase-ads:17.1.2

setting the target version to the latest, if you have used the workaround previously suggested.

----------------------------------------------------------

Set the target to Android API Level to 26 to fix the issue, waiting for Admob update

In build.gradle

targetSdkVersion 26

if targetSdkVersion is >=27 ( > android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.Othat is 26) you get this error, they have changed ActivityRecord in latest Android version adding this:

void setRequestedOrientation(int requestedOrientation) {
        if (ActivityInfo.isFixedOrientation(requestedOrientation) && !fullscreen
                && appInfo.targetSdkVersion > O) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Only fullscreen activities can request orientation");
        ....
        }

The change has been introduced in this commit

Prevent non-fullscreen activities from influencing orientation This changelist enforces that activities targeting O and beyond can only specify an orientation if they are fullscreen.

and probably in admob lib have messed some check