Flutter Android error: was compiled with an incompatible version of Kotlin. The binary version of its metadata is 2.1.0, expected version is 1.8.0

I’m working on a Flutter app and trying to run it on Android using:

• Kotlin version: 2.2.0
• Gradle version: 8.14.3
• JVM target: 17

But I keep getting this error during the build:

e: .../jetified-play-services-measurement-api-23.0.0-api.jar!/META-INF/...kotlin_moduleModule was compiled with an incompatible version of Kotlin. The binary version of its metadata is 2.1.0, expected version is 1.8.0.
...
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':app:compileDebugKotlin'.
> A failure occurred while executing org.jetbrains.kotlin.compilerRunner.GradleCompilerRunnerWithWorkers$GradleKotlinCompilerWorkAction
   > Compilation error. See log for more details

* Try:
> Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace.
> Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
> Run with --scan to get full insights.
> Get more help at https://help.gradle.org.

BUILD FAILED in 9s

┌─ Flutter Fix ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ [!] Your project requires a newer version of the Kotlin Gradle plugin.                           │
│ Find the latest version on https://kotlinlang.org/docs/releases.html#release-details, then       │
│ update the                                                                                       │
│ version number of the plugin with id "org.jetbrains.kotlin.android" in the plugins block of      │
│ /../android │
│ /settings.gradle.                                                                                │
│                                                                                                  │
│ Alternatively (if your project was created before Flutter 3.19), update                          │
│ /../android │
│ /build.gradle                                                                                    │
│ ext.kotlin_version = '<latest-version>'                                                          │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Error: Gradle task assembleDebug failed with exit code 1

I tried:

• Upgrading the Kotlin Gradle plugin to 2.2.0
• Setting jvmTarget to 17
• Cleaning with flutter clean and running again

None of these worked.

To fix the issue, I have end up trying to exclude the problematic modules like this:

implementation('com.google.firebase:firebase-analytics:23.0.0') {
    exclude group: 'com.google.android.gms', module: 'play-services-measurement-api'
    exclude group: 'com.google.android.gms', module: 'play-services-measurement-impl'
}

These exclusions don’t affect basic Firebase Analytics functionality and allow your build to complete successfully in debug mode.

However attempting to run flutter build apk --release will lead you to another error:

Execution failed for task ':app:minifyReleaseWithR8'.
> A failure occurred while executing com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks.R8Task$R8Runnable