When I select release as my build variant in AS, theres always a few modules that I need to change manually. Why is that?

In my experience, when I first change the android application module first, then others will change automatically to the same (or fallback) variant.

This is what I do as well, but there's always a few modules that just remain on the old value

why do you switch to release, though?

To make sure behavior is consistent before I push anything to the play store! 😃

yea but you can buikd it via commandline, no need to mess around with build variants