I`m trying to use my ionic app in android studio but It won`t work

Question

When I try to run the app to see if everything works fine in the emulated phone nothing works and this error shows up I have tried to clean the project and build it again, reinstall everything, restart the computer, I have tried everything but nothing works, ill post my package.json too:

NativePlugin com.capacitorjs.plugins.googlemaps.CapacitorGoogleMapsPlugin failed to load com.getcapacitor.PluginLoadException: Unable to load plugin instance. Ensure plugin is publicly accessible
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.PluginHandle.load(PluginHandle.java:107)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.PluginHandle.<init>(PluginHandle.java:65)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.Bridge.registerPlugin(Bridge.java:685)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.Bridge.registerAllPlugins(Bridge.java:641)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.Bridge.<init>(Bridge.java:226)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.Bridge.<init>(Unknown Source:0)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.Bridge$Builder.create(Bridge.java:1560)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.BridgeActivity.load(BridgeActivity.java:48)
                                                                                                        at com.getcapacitor.BridgeActivity.onCreate(BridgeActivity.java:42)
                                                                                                        at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java:9002)
                                                                                                        at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java:8980)
                                                                                                        at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1526)
                                                                                                        at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:4030)
                                                                                                        at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:4235)
                                                                                                        at android.app.servertransaction.LaunchActivityItem.execute(LaunchActivityItem.java:112)
                                                                                                        at android.app.servertransaction.TransactionExecutor.executeNonLifecycleItem(TransactionExecutor.java:174)
                                                                                                        at android.app.servertransaction.TransactionExecutor.executeTransactionItems(TransactionExecutor.java:109)
                                                                                                        at android.app.servertransaction.TransactionExecutor.execute(TransactionExecutor.java:81)
                                                                                                        at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2636)
                                                                                                        at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:107)
                                                                                                        at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:232)
                                                                                                        at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:317)
                                                                                                        at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:8705)
                                                                                                        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
                                                                                                        at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(RuntimeInit.java:580)
                                                                                                        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:886)
 

This is my package.json:

{
  "name": "Crucero",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "author": "Ionic Framework",
  "homepage": "https://ionicframework.com/",
  "scripts": {
    "ng": "ng",
    "start": "ng serve",
    "build": "ng build",
    "watch": "ng build --watch --configuration development",
    "test": "ng test",
    "lint": "ng lint"
  },
  "private": true,
  "dependencies": {
    "@angular/animations": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/common": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/compiler": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/core": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/fire": "^18.0.1",
    "@angular/forms": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/platform-browser": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/router": "^18.0.0",
    "@capacitor/android": "^6.1.2",
    "@capacitor/app": "6.0.1",
    "@capacitor/core": "6.1.2",
    "@capacitor/google-maps": "^6.0.1",
    "@capacitor/haptics": "6.0.1",
    "@capacitor/keyboard": "6.0.2",
    "@capacitor/preferences": "^6.0.2",
    "@capacitor/status-bar": "6.0.1",
    "@firebase/firestore": "^4.7.4",
    "@ionic-native/core": "^5.36.0",
    "@ionic/angular": "^8.0.0",
    "angularfire2": "^5.4.2",
    "firebase": "^10.14.1",
    "ionicons": "^7.2.1",
    "rxjs": "~7.8.0",
    "tslib": "^2.3.0",
    "zone.js": "~0.14.2"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@angular-devkit/build-angular": "^18.2.11",
    "@angular-eslint/builder": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular-eslint/eslint-plugin-template": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular-eslint/schematics": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular-eslint/template-parser": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/cli": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/compiler-cli": "^18.0.0",
    "@angular/language-service": "^18.0.0",
    "@capacitor/cli": "6.1.2",
    "@ionic/angular-toolkit": "^11.0.1",
    "@types/jasmine": "~5.1.0",
    "@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^6.0.0",
    "@typescript-eslint/parser": "^6.0.0",
    "eslint": "^8.57.0",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.29.1",
    "eslint-plugin-jsdoc": "^48.2.1",
    "eslint-plugin-prefer-arrow": "1.2.2",
    "jasmine-core": "~5.1.0",
    "jasmine-spec-reporter": "~5.0.0",
    "karma": "~6.4.0",
    "karma-chrome-launcher": "~3.2.0",
    "karma-coverage": "~2.2.0",
    "karma-jasmine": "~5.1.0",
    "karma-jasmine-html-reporter": "~2.1.0",
    "typescript": "~5.4.0",
    "webpack": "^5.96.1"
  },
  "description": "An Ionic project"
}

Answer 1

I had a similar issue. The error logs are ambiguous, so I added console logs in the PluginHandle file (click on the links in your error's stack trace to get there quickly):

   try {
        this.instance = this.pluginClass.getDeclaredConstructor().newInstance();
        return this.loadInstance(instance);
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        System.err.println("EXCEPTION LOADING PLUGIN:::::");
        System.err.println(ex.getCause());
        System.err.println(ex.getMessage());
        throw new PluginLoadException("Unable to load plugin instance. Ensure plugin is publicly accessible");
    }

The output specified that I was missing an API Key in the App Manifest XML. documentation does not clearly specify where you should put the metadata tag:

<meta-data
        android:name="com.google.android.geo.API_KEY"
        android:value="YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"/>

Turns out, it has to be a direct child of the node, so make sure you put it immediately after the opening tag <application ...>. I'll see if I can get them to improve their error logging. This stumped me for a couple hours.