Error - Android resource linking failed (AAPT2 27.0.3 Daemon #0)

The Android resource linking failed error can also appear if you have an error in any of your XML resources. In my case I was using the following line twice in one of my XML drawables in drawable folder:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

I removed the duplicate line and the error disappeared. The error was a bit misleading:

Android resource linking failed Output: /Users/johndoe/Desktop/myapp/app/src/main/res/layout/activity_main.xml:2: error: resource drawable/bg_main (aka com.example.myproject:drawable/bg_main) not found.

According to the above error, the first thing you need to do is to proof read all the drawable resources that are accessed in the activity_main because the chances are higher that you will find the error. In the worst case scenario you might end up checking all your resource files.

Had exactly the same problem. Solved it by doing the following: Searching for and replacing com.android.support:support-v4:+ with com.android.support:support-v4:27.1.0 in the platform/android directory.

Also I had to add the following code to the platforms/android/app/build.gradle and platforms/android/build.gradle files:

configurations.all {resolutionStrategy {    force 'com.android.support:support-v4:27.1.0'}}

Edited to answer "Where is this com.android.support:support-v4:+ setting ?" ...

The setting will probably(in this case) be in one of your plugin's .gradle file in the platform/android/ directory, for example in my case it was the starter-barcodescanner plugin so just go through all your plugins .gradle files :

Double check the platforms/android/build.gradle file.

Hope this helps.

Note: Android Studio spits out a load of crazy errors like this if you upgrade the support libraries to 28.0.0 and your compileSdkVersion is not 28 also.