Android Fix: ‘Unknown Install Error 961’

About seventy-five percent of the smartphone users worldwide are Android users, be it the smartphone or tablet. This height of popularity may be due to the features and options people get to use in android, but certainly it also has some bugs. Among them, some are newly discovered and fixed immediately, while some irritate the users for a long time. Here we are discussing about the solution of one of those problems in android- ‘unknown install error 961‘, which is recently discovered among the android users, and is spreading like a plague. For those who are at present suffering by this, while downloading an app, either free or paid, sometimes there’s a problem when installing due to ”unknown install error 961”, shown by the google play store. It is obviously frustrating when the play store uses all your data, even charges you for the app and then finally while installing the app, it says ‘unknown install error 961’, and then doesn’t let your app to install.

If your app is free, there is not much to worry except following the solution methods. But in case your app is paid, you’ve been charged and when you can’t install, you should immediately ask for refund from the play store within fifteen minutes.

After you’ve done this, you can try either of the two methods given below to fix the unknown install error 961:

Method 1: Clearing the cache and data normally

To do this, go into your phone’s settings, then Applications (or Apps or Application Manager), swipe to the left to ”All” and scroll down until you find Google Play, tap on it.

1. In the app information page, tap on the button to empty the cache.
2. If this doesn’t solve the problem, try to delete the data from the Play Store which is found on the same page (Settings > Manage applications > Google Play > Delete data).

This will most probably work, since it had worked in my case when I suffered with the problem in my android.

Method 2: Go to recovery mode and try again

If the above simple method doesn’t solve your problem, then a more thorough option is to do a system cache clear on your android device. Follow the following steps:

1. Power off your phone.
2. Hold volume up/down & power simultaneously until you see the Boot Mode Selection Menu
3. Use volume down to navigate to ‘Recovery’, use volume up to select. You should see screen with triangle and exclamation point next to an Android.
4. Press volume up/down simultaneously to go into system recovery.
5. Use volume rocker to navigate to ‘wipe cache’ and use power button to select
6. Once finished, use volume rocker to navigate to ‘reboot system now’ and use power button to select.

The ‘unknown install error 961’ in your android device has been certainly solved by now, good luck with your play store and app!