How do I get an apk file from an Android device

Question

How do I get the apk file from an android device  Or how do I transfer the apk file from device to system

User · Answer

I ve seen that many solutions to this problem either you have to root your phone or you have to install an app  Then after much googling I got this solution for non rooted rooted phones   To list which apps you got so far   adb shell pm list packages   Then you may select an app  for instance twitter  adb backup -apk com twitter android   An important thing here is to not set up a password for encrypt your backup  This is going to create a file named as backup ap  but you still can t open it  For this you got to extract it again but using the dd command   dd if backup ab bs 24 skip 1   openssl zlib -d  gt  backup tar   After this all you have to do is to extract the tar content and it s done   Hope it works for you guys

User · Answer

Open the app you wish to extract the apk from on your phone  Get the currently opened app with   adb shell dumpsys activity activities   grep mFocusedActivity  Get the path to the package name  adb shell pm path  lt packagename apk gt     4 Copy the path you got to the sdcard directory       adb shell cp  data app  lt packagename apk gt   sdcard   5 Pull the apk      adb pull  sdcard base apk   Edit  If step no 2 doesn t work use this   adb shell dumpsys window windows   grep mCurrentFocus

User · Answer

None of these suggestions worked for me  because Android was appending a sequence number to the package name to produce the final APK file name  On more recent versions of Android  Oreo and Pie   an unpredictable random string is appended  The following sequence of commands is what worked for me on a non-rooted device   1  Determine the package name of the app  e g   com example someapp   Skip this step if you already know the package name   adb shell pm list packages   Look through the list of package names and try to find a match between the app in question and the package name  This is usually easy  but note that the package name can be completely unrelated to the app name  If you can t recognize the app from the list of package names  try finding the app in Google Play using a browser  The URL for an app in Google Play contains the package name   2  Get the full path name of the APK file for the desired package   adb shell pm path com example someapp   The output will look something like    package  data app com example someapp-2 apk or    package  data app com example someapp-nfFSVxn CTafgra3Fr rXQ   base apk  3  Using the full path name from Step 2  pull the APK file from the Android device to the development box   adb pull  data app com example someapp-2 apk path to desired destination

User · Answer

No Root and no ADB tools required method  Install MyAppSharer app from the play store

User · Answer

The procedures outlined here do not work for Android 7  Nougat   and possibly Android 6  but I m unable to verify   You can t pull the  apk files directly under Nougat  unless in root mode  but that requires a rooted phone   But  you can copy the  apk to an alternate path  say  sdcard Download  on the phone using adb shell  then you can do an adb pull from the alternate path

User · Answer

C  Users xyz gt adb shell pm list packages -f   findstr whatsapp package  data app com whatsapp-1 base apk com whatsapp  C  Users xyz gt adb pull  data app com whatsapp-1 base apk Desktop  data app com whatsapp-1 base apk  1 f     13 8 MB s  32803925 bytes in  2 269s

User · Answer

Steps to Download APK from Device to Desktop  A  Make sure that your running  emulator real Device   To check use this command  adb devices   B  Select all the available package list installed in your device  You can use grep command to select the specific package you intend to download   adb shell pm list packages adb shell pm list packages -f -3   Output  List of available packages    package  data app com example mytestapplication-sOzKi5USzfbYLPNDmaaK6g   base apk com example mytestapplication package  data app com example myapplication-nd1I4FGnTZnQ9PyRbPDHhw   base apk com example myapplication   C  Copy the package  which you like to download  from the above link  Form our case I choose this  com example myapplication  package  Syntax   adb shell pm path  your package name  Command  adb shell pm path com example myapplication   Output  package  data app com example myapplication-nd1I4FGnTZnQ9PyRbPDHhw   base apk   D  Finally  To download APK from your  emulator real device    Syntax   adb pull  data app  your package name -1 base apk   your destination path  Command  adb pull  data app com example myapplication-3j4CVk0Tb2gysElgjz5O6A   base apk  Users   whoami  Documents your apk apk   Example  Trying to pull this CertInstaller apk file in your local machine   Mac     adb pull  system app CertInstaller CertInstaller apk  Users   whoami  Documents APK download apk    E  Confirm in your local directory   ls -la  Users   whoami  Documents

User · Answer

I haven t used code to pull  apk file from mobile but i have been using software to extract  apk file from mobile and software i have used are below with google play link    ES File Explorer File Manager ASTRO Cloud  amp  File Manager 3 Software Data Cable   Hope it helps You

User · Answer

This will help for someone who is looking for a non technical answer  This is simple hack  Download the application App Share Send Pro from google play store  Select the app you want to send and method send application   I usually use Bluetooth to send applications to my pc or another phone

User · Answer

Completing  Yojimbo  s answer  this is what I did  Linux Mac only  will not work out of the box on Windows    maybe in git s bash shell    for i in   adb shell pm list packages -f -3   cut -d  -f 1   cut -d     -f 2   do adb pull  i  done   This is ugly bash  but works     EDIT  It no longer works on AndroidM  all files are named  base apk  under another dir  Should be  trivial  to fix

User · Answer

Use adb  With adb pull   you can copy files from your device to your system  when the device is attached with USB   Of course you also need the right permissions to access the directory your file is in  If not  you will need to root the device first     If you find that many of the APKs are named  base apk  you can also use this one line command to pull all the APKs off a phone you can access while renaming any  base apk  names to the package name   This also fixes the directory not found issue for APK paths with seemingly random characters after the name   for i in   adb shell pm list packages   awk -F      print  2     do adb pull    adb shell pm path  i   awk -F      print  2      mv base apk  i apk 2 amp  gt   dev null  done   If you get  adb  error  failed to stat remote object  that indicates you don t have the needed permissions   I ran this on a NON-rooted Moto Z2 and was able to download ALL the APKs I did not uninstall  see below  except youtube   adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com android cellbroadcastreceiver    lt --- kills presidential alert app     to view users run adb shell pm list users  This is a way to remove uninstall  not from the phone as it comes back with factory reset  almost ANY app WITHOUT root INCLUDING system apps  hint the annoying update app that updates your phone line it or not can be found by grepping for  ccc

User · Answer

I got a does not exist error  Here is how I make it works  adb shell pm list packages -f   findstr zalo package  data app com zing zalo-1 base apk com zing zalo  adb shell mido     cp  data app com zing zalo-1 base apk  sdcard zalo apk mido     exit   adb pull  sdcard zalo apk Desktop   sdcard zalo apk  1 file pulled  7 7 MB s  41895394 bytes in 5 200s

User · Answer

Here s how you do it    Download and install APK Extractor in your device  It is free  and is compatible in almost all of the Android devices  Another plus point is it does not even require root or anything to work  After you have it installed  launch it  There you will see a list of apps which are in your device  which include the apps you   ve installed later  along with the system apps  Long press any app you want to extract  you can select multiple or all apps at once   and click on the extract option you see in the top  You will also have the option to share via Bluetooth or messaging  You   re done  you will see the extracted apps as AppName AppPackage AppVersionName AppVersionCode apk  which will be saved in the path  sdcard ExtractedApks  by default   For detailed description for how to extract apk files in android  visit  http   appslova com how-to-extract-apk-files-in-android

User · Answer

On unix systems  you can try this function   function android pull apk         if   -z   1     then         echo  You must pass a package to this function           echo  Ex   android pull apk   com android contacts            return 1     fi      if   -z    adb shell pm list packages   grep  1      then         echo  You are typed a invalid package           return 1     fi      apk path   adb shell pm path  1   sed -e  s package   g    tr   n        tr -d    space          apk name   adb shell basename   apk path    tr   n        tr -d    space           destination   HOME Documents Android APKs      mkdir -p   destination       adb pull   apk path    destination      echo -e   nAPK saved in    destination  apk name         Example  android pull apk com android contacts Note  To identify the package  adb shell pm list packages

User · Answer

One liner which works for all Android versions   adb shell  cat  pm path com example name   cut -d    -f2    gt  app apk

User · Answer

As said above  you can get the apk by using the pull command in adb    Since  you are talking about your installed applications  go ahead and look in the  data app directory of your Android filesystem  You will find the APK s there    Then use the adb command - adb pull  data data appname apk

User · Answer

Try this one liner bash command to backup all your apps   for package in   adb shell pm list packages -3   tr -d   r    sed  s package   g    do apk   adb shell pm path  package   tr -d   r    sed  s package   g    echo  Pulling  apk   adb pull -p  apk   package  apk  done   This command is derived from Firelord s script  I just renamed all apks to their package names for solving the issue with elcuco s script  i e the same base apk file getting overwritten on Android 6 0  Marshmallow  and above   Note that this command backs up only 3rd party apps  coz I don t see the point of backing up built-in apps  But if you wanna backup system apps too  just omit the -3 option

User · Answer

All these answers require multiple steps for each apk file retrieved from the device   1  determine package name  2  find the file  and 3  download it   I built a simple apk grabber python script to do this for any app that matches a given regex  and then decompiles those apks into jar files

User · Answer

I really liked all these answers  Most scripts to export and rename all of them were written in Bash  I made a small Perl script which does the same  which should work both in Perl for windows and linux  only tested on Ubuntu   download-apk pl    usr bin perl -w   Automatically export all available installed APK s using adb use strict  print  quot Connect your device    n quot   system  quot adb quot    quot wait-for-device quot    open my  OUT   -     adb    shell    pm    list    package    -f    my  count   0  while my  line    lt  OUT gt              line    s   s   s    g          my   type   path   package     line                            1  2  3    die  invalid line     line           my  category    path                    1    unknown           my  baseFile    path                     1   die  Unknown basefile in path     path           my  targetFile    quot  category- package apk quot           print  quot  type  category  path  package  baseFile  gt  gt   targetFile n quot           system  quot adb quot    quot pull quot    path           rename  baseFile   targetFile      Make sure adb  exe  is in your path or same directory Connect your phone Run download-apk pl  The output is something similar to      download-apk pl Connect your device      daemon not running  starting it now on port 5037     daemon started successfully   package system  system app YouTube YouTube apk com google android youtube YouTube apk  gt  gt  system-com google android youtube apk 5054 KB s  11149871 bytes in 2 154s  package data  data app com ghostsq commander-1 base apk com ghostsq commander base apk  gt  gt  data-com ghostsq commander apk 3834 KB s  1091570 bytes in 0 278s  package data  data app de blinkt openvpn-2 base apk de blinkt openvpn base apk  gt  gt  data-de blinkt openvpn apk 5608 KB s  16739178 bytes in 2 914s  etc

User · Answer

wanna very  very comfortable 1 minute solution   just you this app https   play google com store apps details id com cvinfo filemanager  smart file manager from google play    tap  apps   choose one and tap  backup   it will end up on your file system in app backup folder

User · Answer

No root is required   This code will get 3rd party packages path with the name so you can easily identify your APK  adb shell pm list packages -f -3   the output will be      package  data app XX XX XX apk YY YY YY   now pull that package using below code   adb pull  data app XX XX XX apk   if you executed above cmd in C  gt     then you will find that package there

User · Answer

Yet another bash script  i e  will work for most unix-based systems   Based on the answer by Pedro Rodrigues  but is slightly easier to use   Improvements over Pedro s version    Original approach did not work for me on Android 7  adb pull kept complaining about no such file or directory while adb shell could access the file  Hence I used different approach  with temporary file  When launched with no arguments  my script will just list all available packages  When partial package name is provided  it will try to guess the full package name  It will complain if there are several possible expansions  I don t hardcode destination path  instead APKs are saved to current working directory    Save this to an executable file      bin bash   Obtain APK file for given package from the device connected over ADB  if   -z   1     then     echo  Available packages        adb shell pm list packages   sed  s  package         echo  You must pass a package to this function       echo  Ex   android pull apk   com android contacts        exit 1 fi  fullname   adb shell pm list packages   sed  s  package       grep  1  if   -z   fullname     then     echo  Could not find package matching  1      exit 1 fi if     echo   fullname    wc -l  -ne 1    then     echo  Too many packages matched       echo   fullname      exit 1 fi echo  Will fetch APK for package  fullname   apk path   adb shell pm path  fullname   sed -e  s package   g    tr   n        tr -d    space      apk name   basename   apk path    tr   n        tr -d    space       destination    fullname  apk   tmp   mktemp --dry-run --tmpdir  sdcard --suffix  apk  adb shell cp    apk path     tmp  adb pull   tmp    destination  adb shell rm   tmp        -eq 0    amp  amp  echo -e   nAPK saved in    destination

User · Answer

If you know  or if you can  guess   the path to the  apk  it seems to be of the format  data app com example someapp- 1 2     apk to   then you can just copy it from  data app as well  This worked even on my non-rooted  stock Android phone   Just use a Terminal Emulator app  such as this one  and run     step 1  confirm path ls  data app com example someapp-1 apk   if it doesn t show up  try -2  -3  Note that globbing  using    doesn t work here    step 2  copy  make sure you adapt the path to match what you discovered above  cp  data app com example someapp-1 apk  mnt sdcard    Then you can move it from the SD-card to wherever you want  or attach it to an email etc   The last bit might be technically optional  but it makes your life a lot easier when trying to do something with the  apk file

User · Answer

Simplest one is   Install  ShareIt  app on phone  Now install shareIt app in PC or other phone  Now from the phone  where the app is installed  open ShareIt and send  On other phone or PC  open ShareIt and receive

[android] How do I get an apk file from an Android device?

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