Could not find play-services-basement.aar

I was trying to build an app in Android Studio when this error popped up.

Error:Could not find play-services-basement.aar (com.google.android.gms:play-services-basement:15.0.1). 
Searched in the following locations:
    https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/google/android/gms/play-services-basement/15.0.1/play-services-basement-15.0.1.aar

As the message says, this error occurs because the build can’t find the play-services-basement library in the repository.

So why does a build that worked just fine until now suddenly fail? The problem is the order of the repositories where libraries are searched for.

You need to edit the android/build.gradle. file. Most likely jcenter() is positioned first. If so,

Move jcenter() to the very bottom.

// Top-level build file where you can add configuration options common to all sub-projects/modules.
buildscript {
    repositories {
        jcenter() // order changed
        google() // move jcenter() to the very bottom
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.2.1'
        classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.0.0'
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
        jcenter() // order changed
        google() // move jcenter() to the very bottom
    }
}

The reason for doing this is that the library isn’t registered in the jcenter library repository. And since it makes more sense to search Google’s official repository first anyway, I moved jcenter down in the priority order for searching libraries.

Now it works just fine!

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50563407/could-not-find-play-services-basement-aar/51213879#51213879