Extracting Android .apk and reading contents of XML file in res/layout

Question

I am trying to reverse engineer an existing android app and understand how a particular UI is constructed. I\'ve found that I can rename the apk to zip and view some of the

Answer 1

Create a new folder and put the .apk file which you want to decode into that.

Download the latest version of from here.

Open cmd then navigate to the root directory of APKtool and type the following command:

apktool d myApp.apk 

(where myApp.apk is the filename that you want to decode)

now you get a file folder in that folder and can easily read the apk's xml files.

Here is the link for more detail install instructions

Answer 2

I think you can use android-apktool. The XML files look very well.

Answer 3

if you just want to know the UI construction ,you can use Hierarchy Viewer

Answer 4

First covert your .apk to .zip. Inside that you will get a compiled-bundled version of java class files called .dex. apply the below trick to convert that dex to class files

There's a way to do this. A slight atypical way is to download this opensource tool dextojar http://code.google.com/p/dex2jar/

This will convert your dex files to Jar file. Unjar these files to get java class files.

Then reverse engineer the java class files to get the java code. Don't use it to break some commercial projects.

Thanks

Answer 5

For those Who are shortcut lovers: and using ubunto,

go to cmd : ctl+alt+t

type:

sudo apt install apktool

press enter then go to your apk(to decompile) folder. by using

cd ~/folder_name

then type:

apktool d yourAppName.apk

and boom , you are done.