AdjustEditorPreprocessor adds deprecated INSTALL_REFERRER receiver despite SDK 5.x using modern Install Referrer Library

[SarpTolga]

• Adjust SDK Version: 5.4.3

The AdjustEditorPreprocessor.cs automatically adds a deprecated AdjustReferrerReceiver to AndroidManifest.xml during build, even though SDK 5.x uses the modern Install Referrer Library (installreferrer:2.2) defined in Dependencies.xml. This causes attribution tracking to fail for Unity Ads campaigns.

[uerceg]

Hey @SarpTolga,

Thanks for reporting this. And indeed, yes, INSTALL_REFERRER intent is pretty outdated and deprecated way of obtaining install referrer, but the reason we historically kept it was because there were some edge cases where this mechanism was still benefiting some of the users. It is definitely on our wish list to be removed and as soon as we are able to, we will remove this from all of our SDKs.

However, your last sentence made me curios. Can you explain a bit more how is the presence of declared broadcast receiver for INSTALL_REFERRER intent in your app manifest causing Unity Ads attribution not to work?

[SarpTolga]

Hey @uerceg ,

Thanks for getting back to me and for the clarification. Let me explain our situation a bit more clearly:

Firstly, the sentence fom my initial post "This causes attribution tracking to fail for Unity Ads campaigns." is not completely true. We give an update on store but havent check the results yet. This was just my guess.

We were originally using Adjust SDK 4.x, and everything was working as expected — including Unity Ads campaign attribution.
However, at some point, Unity Ads tracking stopped working (our Unity Ads campaigns no longer showed any attribution data), while Facebook Ads tracking continued to work normally.

We then updated to Adjust SDK 5.x, thinking the issue might have been related to the older SDK version or the Install Referrer mechanism. But unfortunately, the problem persisted — Unity Ads campaigns are still not being attributed.

While investigating, I noticed that AdjustEditorPreprocessor.cs still adds a deprecated AdjustReferrerReceiver entry to the AndroidManifest.xml, even in SDK 5.x, despite the SDK already depending on installreferrer:2.2.

This made me wonder if having that INSTALL_REFERRER broadcast receiver declared could somehow interfere with Unity Ads attribution. I’m not completely sure this is the cause, but at the moment, I haven’t found any other explanation for why Unity Ads referrer tracking stopped while Facebook attribution continues to work fine.

Thanks again for your help — I’d be happy to share more details, logs, or manifests if it helps diagnose the issue.

[uerceg]

Hey @SarpTolga,

Sorry for the delay and thank you for the detailed explanation. I am not sure whether the presence of our own broadcast receiver that captures INSTALL_REFERRER intent has or should have anything to do with the issues you are facing on the Unity Ads side of things.

Nonetheless, due to the fact that this mechanism is pretty ancient and that we were keeping it in our scripts for sake of some edge cases, it does make sense to allow the majority of people to be able to get rid of this without our script re-adding this every single time.

With that in mind we have just shipped the v5.4.5 update which should allow you to see this option in the prefab inspector menu:

By default, it's selected (backwards compatibility), but in case you unselect it, our script will look for presence of the AdjustBroadcastReceiver inside of your manifest file and remove it for you.

Give the latest SDK version a shot when you find some time and looking forward to hear back from you.

Cheers