Reverse engineering from an APK file to a project

Question

I accidently erased my project from Eclipse  and all I have left is the APK file which I transferred to my phone  Is there a way to reverse the process of exporting an application to the  apk file  so I can get my project back

User · Answer

First of all I recommend this video may this is clears all yours doubts If not please go through it Procedure for decoding  apk files  step-by-step method  Step 1  Make a new folder and put  apk file in it  which you want to decode   Now rename the extension of this  apk file to  zip  eg   rename from filename apk to filename zip  and save it  If problems in the converting into  zip please refers link After getting  zip now you get classes dex files  etc  At this stage you are able to see drawable but not xml and java files  so continue  If you don   t see the extensions go through check the configuration Step 2  Now extract this zip apk file in the same folder  Now download dex2jar from this link and extract it to the same folder  Now open command prompt and change directory to that folder  Then write dex2jar classes dex and press enter  Now you get classes dex dex2jar file in the same folder  Then download java decompiler And now double click on jd-gui and click on open file  Then open classes dex dex2jar file from that folder  Now you get class files and save all these class files  click on file then click  quot save all sources quot  in jd-gui  by src name  Extract that zip file  classes dex2jar src zip  and you will get all java files of the application  At this stage you get java source but the xml files are still unreadable  so continue  Step 3  Now open another new folder and put these files  put  apk file which you want to decode  download  Apktool for windows v1 x And Apktool   install window using google and put in the same folder  download framework-res apk file using google and put in the same folder  Not all apk file need framework-res apk file   Open a command window  Navigate to the root directory of APKtool and type the following command  apktool if framework-res apk    Above command should result in Framework installed       apktool d  quot appName quot  apk   quot appName quot  denotes application which you want to decode  now you get a file folder in that folder and now you can easily read xml files also   Step 4  Finally we got the res  as well as java code of project which is our target at starting   P S  If you are not able to get res folder by above steps please do install new apktool  Is Java 1 7 installed     Install Apktool 2 x Is Java 1 6 or higher installed     Install Apktool 1 x   Enjoy and happy coding

User · Answer

Below are some of the tools which you can use to perform reverse engineering from an APK file to source code     Dex2jar Java decompiler Apktool Apk Analyser

User · Answer

Not really   There are a number of dex disassembler decompiler suites out there such as smali  or dex2jar that will generate semi-humanreadable output  in the case of dex2jar  you can get java code through the use of something like JD-GUI but the process is not perfect and it is very unlikely that you ll be able to 100  recreate your source code   However  it could potentially give you a place to start rebuilding your source tree

User · Answer

Another tool that you may want to use is APK Studio It relies howewer on third party tools  Apktool  jadx  ADB and Uber APK signer that you need to download separately

User · Answer

Try this tool  https   decompile io  it runs on iPhone iPad Mac

User · Answer

Follow below steps to do this or simply use apkToJava gem for this process  it even takes care of installing the required tools for it to work    convert apk file to zip unzip the file extract classes dex from it use dex to jar to convert classes dex into jar file use jadx gui to open the jar file as java source code

User · Answer

If you are looking for a professional alternative  have a look at JEB Decompiler from PNF Software   There is a demo version that will let you decompile most code

User · Answer

No software  amp  No too much steps    Just upload your APK  amp  get your all resources from this site    https   www apkdecompilers com   This website will decompile the code embedded in APK files and extract all the other assets in the file   note  I decompile my APK file  amp  get code within one miniute from this website  Update 1   I found another online decompiler site   http   www javadecompilers com apk  - Not working continuously asking for popup blocking   Update 2   I found apk decompiler app in play store   https   play google com store apps details id com njlabs showjava  We can decompile the apk files in our android phone  and also we can able to view the java  amp  xml files in this application  Update 3   We can use another option Analyze APK feature from Android studio 2 2 version  Build -  Analyze APK -  Select your APK -  it give results

User · Answer

In Android Studio 3 5  It s soo easy that you can just achieve it in a minute  following is a step wise process   1  Open Android Studio  Press window button -  Type Android Studio -  click on icon to open android studio splash screen which will look like this     2  Here you can see an option  Profile or debug APK  click on it and select your apk file and press ok     3  It will open all your manifest and java classes with in a minute depending upon size of apk      That s it

User · Answer

There are two useful tools which will generate Java code  rough but good enough  from an unknown APK file    Download dex2jar tool from dex2jar  Use the tool to convert the APK file to JAR     d2j-dex2jar bat demo apk dex2jar demo apk - gt    demo-dex2jar jar  Once the JAR file is generated  use JD-GUI to open the JAR file  You will see the Java files    The output will be similar to

User · Answer

For the Android platform  you can try ShowJava  available on the Play Store   You can consult the generated code through the app interface and the generated java files and folders structure are stored in ShowJava folder in  sdcard  alongside the resulting  jar file from the conversion   The app is free with an ad banner at the bottom of the main view  but there is an in-app purchase option  3 99   to remove it  In-app purchase does not add any functionality beside removing the ad banner    Disclosure   I m not the developer of the app neither I m affiliated with him in any way

User · Answer

Yes  you can get your project back  Just rename the yourproject apk file to yourproject zip  and you will get all the files inside that ZIP file  We are changing the file extension from  apk to  zip  From that ZIP file  extract the classes dex file and decompile it by following way   First  you need a tool to extract all the  compiled  classes on the DEX to a JAR  There s one called dex2jar  which is made by a Chinese student   Then  you can use JD-GUI to decompile the classes in the JAR to source code  The resulting source code should be quite readable  as dex2jar applies some optimizations

User · Answer

There is a new way to do this   Android Studio 2 2 has APK Analyzer it will give lot of info about apk  checkout it here  - http   android-developers blogspot in 2016 05 android-studio-22-preview-new-ui html

[android] Reverse engineering from an APK file to a project

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