How can one pull the private data of one s own Android app

Question

Attempting to pull a single file using   adb pull  data data com corp appName files myFile txt myFile txt   fails with  failed to copy   data data com corp appName files myFile txt myFile txt  to  myFile txt   Permission denied   despite that USB debugging is enabled on the device   We can go around the problem through the archaic route   adb shell run-as com corp appName cat files myFile txt  gt  myFile txt   but this is unwieldy for more than one file   How can I pull the directory  data data com corp appName files to my MacBook   Doing this either directly or through a transit in   storage sdcard0 myDir  from where I can continue with Android File Transfer  is fine   Additional Comment  It may be that just running  adb backup  -f myFiles com corp appName   will generate the files I am looking for  In that case I am looking for a way to untar unzip the resulting backup

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On MacOSX  by combining the answers from Calaf and Ollie Ford  the following worked for me   On the command line  be sure adb is in your path  mine was at   Library Android sdk platform-tools adb  and with your android device plugged in and in USB debugging mode  run    adb backup -f backup com mypackage myapp   Your android device will ask you for permission to backup your data  Select  BACKUP MY DATA   Wait a few moments   The file backup will appear in the directory where you ran adb   Now run   dd if backup bs 1 skip 24   python -c  import zlib sys sys stdout write zlib decompress sys stdin read       gt  backup tar   Now you ll you have a backup tar file you can untar like this    tar xvf backup tar   And see all the files stored by your application

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Here is what worked for me   adb -d shell  run-as com example test cat  data data com example test databases data db   gt  data db   I m printing the database directly into local file

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Newer versions of Android Studio include the Device File Explorer which I ve found to be a handy GUI method of downloading files from my development Nexus 7   You Must make sure you have enabled USB Debugging on the device   Click View   Tool Windows   Device File Explorer or click the Device File Explorer button in the tool window bar to open the Device File Explorer  Select a device from the drop down list  Interact with the device content in the file explorer window  Right-click on a file or directory to create a new file or directory  save the selected file or directory to your machine  upload  delete  or synchronize  Double-click a file to open it in Android Studio     Android Studio saves files you open this way in a temporary directory outside of your project  If you make modifications to a file you opened using the Device File Explorer  and would like to save your changes back to the device  you must manually upload the modified version of the file to the device      Full Documentation

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adb backup will write an Android-specific archive   adb backup  -f myAndroidBackup ab  com corp appName   This archive can be converted to tar format using   dd if myAndroidBackup ab bs 4K iflag skip bytes skip 24   openssl zlib -d  gt  myAndroidBackup tar   Reference   http   nelenkov blogspot ca 2012 06 unpacking-android-backups html  Search for  Update  at that link     Alternatively  use Android backup extractor to extract files from the Android backup   ab  file

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Similar to Tamas s answer  here is a one-liner for Mac OS X to fetch all of the files for app with your app id from your device and save them to  in this case    Desktop your app id         id your app id  amp  amp      dest   Desktop  amp  amp      adb shell  run-as  id cp -r  data data  id  sdcard   amp  amp      adb -d pull   sdcard  id    dest   amp  amp      if   -n   id     then adb shell  rm -rf  sdcard  id   fi      Exclude the -d to pull from emulator Doesn t stomp your session variables You can paste the whole block into Terminal app  or remove newlines if desired

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If you are using a Mac machine and a Samsung phone  this is what you have to do  since run-as doesn t work on Samsung and zlib doesn t work on Mac    Take a backup of your app s data directory adb backup -f  Users username Desktop data ab com example You will be asked for a password to encrypt in your Phone  don t enter any  Just tap on  Back up my data   See How to take BackUp  Once successfully backed up  you will see data ab file in your Desktop  Now we need to convert this to tar format  Use Android Backup Extractor for this  Download   SourceCode Download it and you will see abe jar file  Add this to your PATH variable  Execute this to generate the tar file  java -jar abe jar unpack  Users username Desktop data ab  Users username Desktop data tar Extract the data tar file to access all the files

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This answer is based on my experience with other answers  and comments in the answers  My hope is I can help someone in a similar situation   I am doing this on OSX via terminal   Previously Vinicius Avellar s answer worked great for me  I was only ever most of the time needing the database from the device from a debug application    Today I had a use case where I needed multiple private files  I ended up with two solutions that worked good for this case         Use the accepted answer along with Someone Somewhere s OSX specific comments  Create a backup and use the 3rd party solution    sourceforge net projects adbextractor files  source navbar to unpack   into a tar  I ll write more about my experience with this solution at the bottom of this answer  Scroll down if   this is what you are looking for    A faster solution which I settled with  I created a script for pulling multiple files similar to Tamas  answer  I am able to do it   this way because my app is a debug app and I have access to run-as on   my device  If you don t have access to run-as this method won t work   for you on OSX       Here is my script for pulling multiple private files that I ll share with you  the reader  who is also investigating this awesome question          bin bash     Strict mode  http   redsymbol net articles unofficial-bash-strict-mode  set -euo pipefail IFS    n t        Usage  script -f fileToPull -p packageName       This script is for pulling private files from an Android device   using run-as  Note  not all devices have run-as access  and   application must be a debug version for run-as to work       If run-as is deactivated on your device use one of the   alternative methods here    http   stackoverflow com questions 15558353 how-can-one-pull-the-private-data-of-ones-own-android-app      If you have encrypted backup files use    sourceforge net projects adbextractor files  source navbar    From comments in the accepted answer in the above SO question      If your files aren t encrypted use the accepted answer      see comments and other answers for OSX compatibility        This script is open to expansions to allow selecting    device used  Currently first selected device from   adb shell will be used    Check we have one connected device adb devices -l   grep -e  device b   gt   dev null  if      -gt 0    then     echo  No device connected to adb       exit 1 fi    Set filename or directory to pull from device   Set package name we will run as while getopts f p  opt  do     case  opt in         f              fileToPull  OPTARG                        p              packageName  OPTARG                    esac done     Block file arg from being blank if   -z   fileToPull     then     echo  Please specify file or folder to pull with -f argument      exit 1 fi    Block package name arg from being blank if   -z   packageName     then     echo  Please specify package name to run as when pulling file      exit 1 fi    Check package exists adb shell pm list packages   grep   packageName   gt   dev null if      -gt 0    then     echo  Package name  packageName does not exist on device      exit 1 fi    Check file exists and has permission with run-as fileCheck  adb shell  run-as  packageName ls  fileToPull   if     fileCheck     Permission denied            fileCheck     No such file or directory      then     echo  Error   fileCheck      echo  With file - gt   fileToPull      exit 1 fi    Function to pull private file     param 1   package name   param 2   file to pull   param 3   output file function pull private file           mkdir -p  dirname  3       echo -e   033 0 35m      gt  amp 2     echo -e   033 0 36m Coping file  2 - gt   3   gt  amp 2     echo -e   033 0 35m    033 0m   gt  amp 2      adb shell  run-as  1 cat  2   gt   3      Check if a file is a directory      param 1   directory to check function is file dir          adb shell  if   -d    1      then echo TRUE  fi       Check if a file is a symbolic link      param 1   directory to check function is file symlink          adb shell  if   -L    1      then echo TRUE  fi       recursively pull files from device connected to adb      param 1   package name   param 2   file to pull   param 3   output file function recurse pull private files          is dir  is file dir   2       is symlink  is file symlink   2        if   -n   is dir     then          files  adb shell  run-as  1 ls    2                Handle the case where directory is a symbolic link         if   -n   is symlink     then             correctPath  adb shell  run-as  1 ls -l    2      sed  s   - gt        tr -d   r               files  adb shell  run-as  1 ls    correctPath             fi          for i in  files  do                Android adds nasty carriage return that screws with bash vars               This removes it  Otherwise weird behavior happens             fileName  echo   i    tr -d   r                 nextFile   2  fileName              nextOutput   3  fileName              recurse pull private files   1    nextFile    nextOutput          done     else          pull private file   1    2    3      fi    recurse pull private files   packageName    fileToPull    basename   fileToPull      Gist  https   gist github com davethomas11 6c88f92c6221ffe6bc26de7335107dd4    Back to method 1  decrypting a backup using Android Backup Extractor  Here are the steps I took on my Mac  and issues I came across   First I queued up a backup   and set a password to encrypt my backup  my device required it     adb backup -f myAndroidBackup ab  com corp appName   Second I downloaded just abe jar from here  https   sourceforge net projects adbextractor files abe jar download  Next I ran    java -jar   abe jar unpack myAndroidBackup ab myAndroidBackup tar   At this point I got an error message  Because my archive is encrypted  java gave me an error that I needed to install some security policy libraries    So I went to http   www oracle com technetwork java javase downloads jce8-download-2133166 html and downloaded the security policy jars I needed  Now in my case the install instructions told me the wrong location to put the jar files  It says that the proper location is  lt java-home gt  lib security  I put them there first and still got the error message  So I investigated and on my Mac with Java 1 8 the correct place to put them was   lt java-home gt  jre lib security  I made sure to backup the original policy jars  and put them there  Vola I was able to enter a password with abe jar and decrypt to a tar file    Lastly I just ran   after running previous command again    tar xvf myAndroidBackup tar   Now it is important to note that if you can just run-as and cat  it is much much faster  One  you only get the files you want and not the entire application  Two  the more files     encryption for me   makes it slower to transfer  So knowing to do this way is important if you don t have run-as on OSX  but the script should be first goto for a debug application   Mind you I just wrote it today and tested it a few times  so please notify me of any bugs

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Starting form Dave Thomas script I ve been able to write my own solution to overcome 2 problems    my backup was containing only the manifest file binary files got with Dave Thomas where unreadable   This is my script  that copies app data to sdcard and then pull it   Check we have one connected device adb devices -l   grep -e  device b   gt   dev null  if      -gt 0    then     echo  No device connected to adb       exit 1 fi    Set filename or directory to pull from device   Set package name we will run as while getopts f p  opt  do     case  opt in         f              fileToPull  OPTARG                        p              packageName  OPTARG                    esac done     Block package name arg from being blank if   -z   packageName     then     echo  Please specify package name to run as when pulling file      exit 1 fi    Check package exists adb shell pm list packages   grep   packageName   gt   dev null if      -gt 0    then     echo  Package name  packageName does not exist on device      exit 1 fi      adb shell  run-as  packageName cp -r  data data  packageName   sdcard  packageName      adb pull  sdcard  packageName     adb shell rm -rf  sdcard  packageName

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After setting the right permissions by adding the following code   File myFile        myFile setReadable true  false      readable  not only for the owner   adb pull works as desired   see File setReadable

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Does that mean that one could chmod the directory from world --x to world r-x long enough to be able to fetch the files    Yes  exactly  Weirdly enough  you also need the file to have the x bit set   at least on Android 2 3   chmod 755 all the way down worked to copy a file  but you should revert permissions afterwards  if you plan to continue using the device

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you can do       adb pull  storage emulated 0 Android data

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Backed up Game data with apk  Nougat Oneplus 2     adb backup  -apk com nekki shadowfight  -f  c  myapk samsung2 ab

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You may use this shell script below  It is able to pull files from app cache as well  not like the adb backup tool      bin sh  if   -z   1     then      echo  Sorry script requires an argument for the file you want to pull       exit 1 fi  adb shell  run-as com corp appName cat   data data com corp appNamepp  1   gt    sdcard  1   adb pull   sdcard  1  adb shell  rm   sdcard  1     Then you can use it like this     pull sh files myFile txt   pull sh cache someCachedData txt

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I had the same problem but solved it running following     adb shell   run-as  app-package-name    cd  data data  app-package-name    chmod 777  file    cp  file   mnt sdcard    After this you can run    adb pull  mnt sdcard  file

[android] How can one pull the (private) data of one's own Android app?

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