Missing Default

Missing Default

If a resource is only defined in folders with qualifiers like -land or -en, and there is no default declaration in the base folder (layout or values etc), then the app will crash if that resource is accessed on a device where the device is in a configuration missing the given qualifier.

As a special case, drawables do not have to be specified in the base folder; if there is a match in a density folder (such as drawable-mdpi) that image will be used and scaled. Note however that if you only specify a drawable in a folder like drawable-en-hdpi, the app will crash in non-English locales.

There may be scenarios where you have a resource, such as a -fr drawable, which is only referenced from some other resource with the same qualifiers (such as a -fr style), which itself has safe fallbacks. However, this still makes it possible for somebody to accidentally reference the drawable and crash, so it is safer to create a default fallback in the base folder. Alternatively, you can suppress the issue by adding tools:ignore="MissingDefaultResource" on the element.

(This scenario frequently happens with string translations, where you might delete code and the corresponding resources, but forget to delete a translation. There is a dedicated issue id for that scenario, with the id ExtraTranslation.)

Issue id: MissingDefaultResource