android-studio-version-build-fail.md

This version of Android Studio cannot open this project, please retry with Android Studio x.x or newer

Today, I had to work on a few months old project. When I opened the project in Android Studio, the gradle sync failed with the following message.

This version of Android Studio cannot open this project, please retry with Android Studio x.x or newer"

I realized that the project was originally created in Android Studio Canary version 3.6 alpha/beta. But today I was using the Android Studio 3.5 stable release. That's why there was version mismatch error. At first, I tried to do the "Invalidate Cache and Restart". I thought this will fix the issue. But, it wasn't the issue of old gradle cache files. Rather it was about which gradle version project is using.

In my root project build.gradle file, I was using 3.6.0-alpha02 version.

// Top-level build file where you can add configuration options common to all sub-projects/modules.

// .....
// .....

buildscript {
    ext.kotlin_version = '1.3.31'
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }
    
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.6.0-alpha02'           <------ THIS LINE IS IMPORTANT
        
        classpath "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:$kotlin_version"
        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files


    }
}

// .....
// .....

All I had to do was to change the version back where current Android Studio can supports it. So, for Android Studio 3.5, I will have to use 3.5.x version. I changed it to 3.5.0 stable release like this.

  classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.5.0'

And synced the project and voilaaaaa.... Done

Reference

Some other suggestions to this problem are in this StackOverflow Discussion.