Ryan Fan says in his article :

All I know is that losing items, when it happens, turns me into a very flustered person. My anxiety spikes when I realized “shit, I’ve lost my keys. Again.” It’s an inner voice that tells me that I haven’t improved and I’m still making the same mistakes despite having come so far in my growth. Well, I’ve grown, I tell myself, but why do I lose things?

Everyone can be like Ryan, losing things and forgetting places and names is absolutely human.

When using a computer full of projects and files, it sometimes happens that you forget the location of a file. One of these files can be the Android signing key of a published app in the Google Play that requires an update…

And sometimes, you can even lose all your computer’s files due to virus or disk damage…
In my opinion, losing a an app’s signing key is like losing the keys to your girlfriend’s house 😂.

But don’t panic, you can easily get new signing key and you’ll be able to use it quickly. Just follow the next steps :

Fill this Google support form. For the Developer account ID, you can found get it from here. Don’t forget to include the app’s package name and describe the issue by mentioning that you lost the app’s signing key.

Once you have submitted the form, Google will send an email indicating that they are processing your request:

The first email from google

Then, in a short time they’ll send you an instruction email. For me it only took 19 hours to get this email. They will ask you to generate a new key and its certificate, and send them this last certificate.

These steps are not complicated, especially since they are documented by Google:

• So first, generate a new key even by following this tutorial or just writing this line in the terminal :

keytool -genkeypair -alias upload -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 9125 -keystore keystore.jks

• Then, export the certificate for that key to PEM format using this line in the terminal :

keytool -export -rfc -alias upload -file upload_certificate.pem -keystore keystore.jks

At this point you must have the .pem file in your project’s folder, please don’t lose it 😀

The instruction email

Now, reply to the last Google email as soon as you generate them by attaching the .pem file.

In a day or even less, you’ll receive a confirmation email from Google indicating that you can use your new key from the day after tomorrow at a specific time.

They add in the same email some tips so that you do not lose the keys to your girlfriend’s house again 😅

So, please follow these tips to avoid any type of headache related to this subject.

Google’s confirmation email

All I can say right now is, Congratulations for you new keys.