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Things I've tried: 1. specifying the version of okhttp to latest 2. trying to override okhttp version via

configurations.all {
  resolutionStrategy {
    force("com.squareup.okhttp3:okhttp:4.10.0")
  }
}

What repositories have you define and where?

It ended up being java version 7 being the culprit. once i updated to 1.8 then everything worked.

There was most probably more information. But as you are using AS or IJ you might easily miss it due to this annoyance: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-226613/Gradle-build-on-failed-build-IDE-auto-focuses-and-shows-incomplete-error-message-which-makes-it-hard-to-understand-why-build 2 so you need to select a higher node in the tree to see the actual error details.

thanks. ill star that