Hot answers tagged apk
24
I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure this out because I don't feel like having the "google experience" and as far as I can tell, it isn't possible. I've worked around it:
The F-Droid repository and Amazon markets are both reasonably well maintained -- either will manage any apps you install, which is handy. That's where I start.
Otherwise, I ...
23
Use DropBox. Put the APK in your DropBox folder. Open up the DropBox app on your phone, find the apk, tap on it, and it should download it to your phone and then install it.
Use the SD card. Plug your phone into the computer via USB. Mount the SD card drive. Copy the APK into the SD card. Unmount your phone. Browse to the APK using a file browser app ...
19
Sidestepping the debate over the legitimacy of installing that app on your phone, the question of verification is one that I've been meaning to understand for a while, and you've prompted me to try to figure out a possible way of verifying who signed an apk.
Android apps are signed in the normal manner of .jar files (.apk is really just a special .jar which ...
15
There is no easy way to download an APK file. However, redphoenix89 has found a way to download the APK with a Chrome extension. bexton did some cleanups and the result including a guide is available:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1809458
The guide mentions that you need to disable SSL warnings, but I could download APKs even without ...
14
As Liam already pointed out, there's no danger involved for the developer. If one wants to grab the .apk for distribution, that's easily possible using apps like AppMonster, which can back up the .apk file to SD card. No extra protection from Google's side -- except users might feel more safe installing it from a "trusted source" (and they are right about ...
12
There is nothing dangerous about it, and this is done occasionally when the store isn't accessible.
In response to your second question, apks are not unique - and can be easily transferred to another device, or the internet. This is the base of android app piracy.
When you upload the APK to Google Play, GPlay does nothing to it. It is up to the developer ...
10
Another way...
Place the .apk file onto your SD card (by using your phone as a mounted drive).
Enable applications from unknown sources (go to Settings > Applications > then verify that Unknown Sources is selected).
Use an application such as Installer or APK Manager to install the application.
10
As many others have said, you cannot download directly from the market.
Android Phones with Google experience maintain a connection to Google's servers; it is over this channel that Google tells your phone to download & install the APK.
Alternative markets & websites are certainly options - please note it can be hard to determine if the application ...
9
Try wget http://www.blah.com/files.apk in the terminal emulator (if you're using CyanogenMod, then you probably have BusyBox, which includes wget), you might need root to write to the internal memory, so if you don't have write permission in the current directory, then you might need to type su first.
9
Android does not natively back up applications so you can't "undo" an app update. Best thing I'd say you can do is something like this howto. It backs up your apks and their settings. It uses Titanium Backup and requires root, but rooting is not your problem.
8
If you don't have root access, it doesn't matter because you won't be able to back them up.
If you do have root access, use an app like Titanium Backup to back up the apks.
Note:
This doesn't really answer the question of where to find the downloaded APKs, but it does address the need of the OP.
8
It should be located at /data/app/. You can access that directly if you have root. If not, you will have to use adb pull. For example:
adb pull /data/app/myapp.apk C:\backup\myapp.apk
More info on adb: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/adb.html
8
One thing you could potentially do is get the android market on the android emulator (which I don't think your supposed to be able to do, but some people have done it in the past), and download the apk onto the emulator. Then, you can find the data in /data/app/-.apk on the emulator. Pull it off with adb, and install it on your device with adb.
But like ...
8
As eldarerathis already pointed out in his comment on your question: If the app is already installed, and the certificate matches, you will be prompted whether you want to replace it. If the certificates differ, there's a conflict: The app cannot be updated due to the mismatch, and it cannot be installed along as the package name is already in use (apps use ...
8
Even if ProGuard was used you still can get some interesting insights. Here is a StackOverflow question with a detailed explanation: Android: Getting source code from an APK file. YouTube video with a detailed guide. And a blog entry about that: How to retrieve source code from an Android APK file.
7
Use a file manager to look in the following locations:
/data/app
/data/app-private
/system/app/
/sdcard/.android_secure (shows .asec files, not .apks)
On Samsung phones: /sdcard/external_sd/.android_secure
You need to be rooted to view the first three.
7
You cannot download apk files from http://play.google.com/store.
There are other ways to get apps (alternative markets, developer sites) and you can install them manually provided you can turn on the "Unknown sources" setting.
6
At least on my phone, it seems you need way more available space thanthe size of the app you are actually trying to upgrade. In my case it seems I needed to have at least ~13MB free space to upgrade anything at all (even for 500KB apps).
Some tips to free space:
Go to Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, click "Move to
SD card" on the ones that ...
6
You will need to push the .apk to the phone to the System partition to the folder "/system/app" using ADB. You can find more info about ADB here: http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=ADB.
Afterwards if the flags are not already set change the permissions. All System-Apps need to have the permissions rw-r--r--. You can also change them via ADB with ...
6
I prefer using the ADB. However, It's a little less user friendly. This isn't the easiest way, but it will work without an SD card and will work without the device being internet connected(some devices(tablets) aren't).
At the command line you would type:
adb install "full-absolute-path-to-apk-here.apk"
The "tools" directory of the SDK must be in your ...
5
You can also place an .apk file on a web server and then using the built-in web browser on your android phone, navigate to that URL which will cause the browser to download the apk file. You will then have the ability in the downloads window to click on the downloaded apk file which Android will then try to install.
I forgot to mention to make sure the ...
5
Connect your x10 to your computer with the old 8gb car installed and enable usb debugging
With your PCs file manager copy the entire contents of your x10's SD card to a temporary folder.
Change the cards so the 32gb is installed.
Copy the entire contents of the temp folder onto the new microSD.
It will be an exact mirror of what you had before.
5
Try downloading a file explorer like ES File Explorer, find the apk and select it. Android should prompt to install from there.
The selected answer you are referring to says to download Astro - which is another file manager. I'm not sure about the default Android browser though.
5
There have been times that I haven't been able to install an app from the Market on the phone but I have been able to get it to download by using the Market site on my computer bt telling it to install the app. Usually the app starts downloading almost immediately. That won't work if the router/network you are using is blocking access for some reason but ...
4
This is based on my EVO, but they appear to download into the Appstore's "private" external storage directory, which is /sdcard/Android/data/com.amazon.venezia/cache/. From what I've seen they appear to then get deleted after being installed, but anything which has been downloaded and not installed looks to be there.
4
There are a few ways to install an app:
Post it online (with something like Dropbox) and navigate to the
URL in your tablet's browser
Use the marketplace if it's listed there
Use adb install to do it
Make sure on the device that you have checked the checkbox listed at Settings > Applications > Unknown Sources if it is not in the Market. This will ...
4
As a general rule, I don't trust any "freeware" or "shareware" site that has not specifically been recommended to me by someone I know and trust, and because these sites aren't my thing I can't either recommend or condemn this specific example. I can answer part of your question, though, and say an emphatic yes, unscrupulous people can inject malware into ...
4
You can redownload them any time you want or just install them using a file manager, no need to put them back there.
If you backup them to your PC it's a good idea to use something like this to keep track of the various apks.
4
If you're using su to get root privileges when you shell in (which you've indicated you are) then that means you're not root on the shell by default. adb pull fails with that error message because it doesn't have permission to index the directory and pull the contents.
You should be able to restart adb on your device with adb root first:
adb root
adb pull ...
3
If I'm interpreting "on the computer" correctly to mean "I want to use the command line on my computer to read an .apk file's permissions" then you can do that with aapt on a local file like so:
C:\>aapt d permissions "MyApp.apk"
package: com.app.myapp
uses-permission: android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE
uses-permission: android.permission.INTERNET
...
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