Is it possible to download any number of apks onto an external storage from an Android app? I want to download certified Android apps from the Play Store for analysis purpose.
I've thought about writing a web crawler that would use the Play Store as the root URL. The PlayStore however downloads and installs all APKS straight to the device. There is also no Google Play Store API that would take care of the authentication.
I thought it would be fun to write an app that would do the same and download all the apks and store them in the external storage instead of the /downloads.
Any tips, leads or suggestions greatly appreciated!
Thank you
Related
I am currently working on an android game but when I try to build it, we can do it in two ways i.e.
If we check the Bundle Opting in the build menu then it will come in a single file of formate .adb (Android Debug Bride) it may or may not work with Google Play Store or the App Store but I am not targeting on that I wanted a file or files that I can share with my friends or on itch.io because you can only upload a file or files on it, it is not responsible for installing for anything and whoever downloads the from it, he will just get the file on his/her android device and will not get an installed app to start playing it.
we can also check the Splitting opting in the player menu of project setting and then the build will split into two files, 1. .apk , 2. .obb. well this is a good option but with the same problem if I upload it to a distributor or share it to my friends the two files will be downloaded or shared with no installation
Please tell me a way how I can make a file that can download itself or any solution to this.
I just want a way to build an android game that can easily be installed through a distributor or through sharing
Thank You in Advance
What you want is just an APK.
An app bundle is intended for the Google Play Store. If you upload your app as an app bundle to the Play Store, Google repackages it into multiple APKs which only contain the data and code that is required for specific device configurations of end users. E.g. it only contains specific languages, and code for specific architectures and so on.
If you enable the "Split Application Binary" option, Unity limits the size of your APK to 100MB since this is the limit of the Google Play Store. It then creates the expansion file (.obb) which you would also upload to the Play Store.
In your case, you don't need any of it. You need one APK.
Disable "Build AppBundle (Google Play)" and "Split Application Binary" and you should be able to create one big APK.
My game 160MB of size, I separate it one apk and one main OBB, the question is, is it possible if publish it together but need user download only apk, it will download obb in the game later? The point is made it look smallest size of the game for download in google play and using google play server host instead of using our host.
From the documentation, If Google Play is able to download the expansion files (which is the case for most devices), it downloads them along with the APK. If Google Play is unable to download the expansion files, it downloads the APK only.
When the user launches your application, your app must check whether the expansion files are already saved on the device. If yes, your app is ready to go. If no, your app must download the expansion files over HTTP from Google Play.
So Google Play will always try to download the expansion file(s) at the same time if downloads the APK, so your application has everything it needs when the user opens it for the first time. Unless there is no available space to save the expansion file(s), or no network connection. So, no way to force users to download the APK only in most cases.
As #ztan said, in the worst case need to publish only apk file and download obb in the first time from our host.
I have an existing application on PLAY STORE with 1.5 GBs of data hosted on and downloadable from an external server.
After installing the application I am asking the user to download the data and set the path for it in the application.
Now I want to integrate the Expansion file mechanism in this application.
My questions are:
Is it possible to update the application with the Expansion File mechanism in which New users are able to download the data through the expansion file and existing users (after updating apk from the Play Store) don't need to download the expansion file again and can continue with the old data?
This is the paid application which is using GOOGLE Licensing as well; so if the above is not possible and if it's needed to upload a new application with a different package name and unpublishing the current application, then how to maintain existing users' (old application) Licensing?
Thanks in Advance.
Neither is possible:
Re 1: Google Play usually downloads the expansion file right along with the APK.
Re 2: Apps can only verify their own license not the license of other apps using Google's License Verification Library.
many of my users have problems to install my App from the Play Store due to a lack of enought internal memory. The size of the App is: APK 37MB + EXPANSION 1,3 GB.
I was aware that many users don't want to have such big data in the system memory and implemented the licencing- and download-libary example, and changed the code that the expansion-file will be downloaded directliy to the physical sd-card. But the user can run my download-process only from the options-menu within the App.
.
The problem:
Google stated here:
"...If Google Play is unable to download the expansion files, it downloads the APK only."
But this seems to be wrong. Many user complain about installation issues and "pending/hanging" downloads. They say that when they install the App from the market that Google Play tries to download the OBB-Expansion File in the first place and (what makes it even worse) to the internal memory.
So the user can not start the App and make use of my download implementation.
As I want to make use of the security features of google's licensing mechanisms I had following idea:
Upload my app to the developer console without the expansion.
Upload another dummy-apk with the 1,3GB expansion, and don't publish it
Try to download the Expansion from the options-menu from my original app und use the licence-key from the dummy apk.
Can somebody confirm that this could work?
Is there an way to make Google Play download the large expansion directly to the external memory? Maybe if i modify the Manifest with:
android:installLocation="auto"
Any Ideas are appreciated!
Why don't you put the preferExternal value for installLocation in your manifest? This will put all files in external storage if available. Do this for all your apk files.
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:installLocation="preferExternal"
... >
from: app install location
Is it possible to disable the automatic download of the APK expansion file when you download the application from google play?
Can I force google play to disable the download and let the application download itself the expansion file?
Thanks
If it's your own application you want to test, the best option is to install localy the .apk file on your device without the expansion pack. Upload the application and expansion pack to Google Play and activate it without publishing. When you first start your application, the expansion files will be downloaded from Google Play. This way you can test your expansion files downloader.
#Kai
Is there a specific reason for you to wish for downloading the files yourself?
Yea, our App has many stages(game), each requires its own specific data(media), so downloading only the required data will help increase convenience of the user by avoiding unwanted paid mobile data usage...