Using apktool to decompile apk file - android

I tried extracting apk file using apktool. I followed steps mentioned below.
Is there a way to get the source code from an APK file?
but i am not able to get it completely.I am not sure about where to put the apktool and how to decompile apk file.
i got following error while running apktool command
C:\Windows\System32>apktool.bat
Unable to access jarfile C:\Windows\System32\apktool.jar
Please help me to sort this out.
Thanks in advance

I faced the same problem. I my case i discovered that the jar file is present in a separate package and i had to download apktool1.5.2.tar.bz2 in addition to apktool-install-windows-r05-ibot.tar.bz2 .
Then i extracted the jar file and placed it in the same directory as apktool.
Hope it helps.

I also had this problem, then i noticed this in apktool.After done that,apktool gone well.
Rename downloaded jar to apktool.jar

I would create a folder called "apktool" somewhere where it won't be deleted ( a safe spot ).
Download the wrapper file & the apktool file itself via the Google code page (linked below). This is 2 files. One is a wrapper, OS specific, along with aapt ( which is needed for rebuild), and the other is simply apktool.jar which is the main application.
Once that is done, go into Environment Variables (PATH) for Windows, and add that current directory to it. So you can access apktool / aapt anywhere via command prompt.
http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/

ApkTool + Dex2Jar + any java decompiler? Comon! This is old style :0)
Try NEW open-source APK and DEX decompiler called Jadx: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jadx/files/
It has also online version here: http://www.javadecompilers.com/apk/

I have followed https://ibotpeaches.github.io/Apktool/install/ link for windows and renamed jar file as "apktool.jar" with extra jar extension (ie.apktool.jar.jar) so I was getting "Error: Unable to access jarfile C:\APKtool\apktool.jar".
After renaming properly (removing extra .jar extension) , I am able to use "apktool.jar" properly.
I know it is silly mistake, but some time it happens :)

Those who are still facing same issue, follow below steps:
Download "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iBotPeaches/Apktool/master/scripts/windows/apktool.bat"
download latest apktool from https://bitbucket.org/iBotPeaches/apktool/downloads/
Rename apktool_version.jar to apktool.jar
Put .bat and .jar in same folder.
Run apktool.bar d "path of apkfile/example.apk"

Related

why I am not able to see classes.dex after extraction of .apk?

I have opened .apk archive file which shows me the following file:
Androidmanifest.xml
resource.ars
META-INF folder
RES folder
I am not able to get classes.dex. It shows me in zip folder but when I extract it classes.dex disappear after extraction.
No idea how that happened to you, but you can decompile the apk directly into Java source code using a tool called JADX. Just search it for your platform in Google.
I got the solution of my question and posting answer so may be helpful to someone.
Android .apk file which I was using was malware sample. My Antivirus was not allowing extraction of classes.dex, so it was removed by Antivirus automatically after few seconds.

No "libs" directory found after reversing the android app using apktool?

I reversed an app (my own dummy app) using apktool.
>apktool d testing.apk
The last line of output in the terminal says "I: Copying assets and libs..." but there is no "libs" directory in the generated folder.
Am I missing something here ?
I want to know which 3rd party libraries are being used. This can be found from "libs" directory but I am not getting this directory. Any help is highly appreciated. Thank you.
You don't need apktool to get the libs. An APK is just a ZIP. Just unzip testing.apk and look for a lib/ directory.
If it's not there, it may not use shared libraries. Or, they may be downloaded at runtime. To check, install and run the app such that you're sure it's used functions from the shared library. Then, pull the files off the device with:
adb pull /data/data/<package name>/lib

cmd cannot recognize dex2jar- Android Apk

i want to get source code from apk and use this solution Is there a way to get the source code from an APK file?
i try to dex file to jar and i used dex2jar; but cmd cannot recognize this command.
dex2jar classes.dex
"dex2jar is not recognized as an internal or external command"
is dex2jar deprecated?
what can i use to convert dex to jar?
None of the above answers worked for me, I was able to get it working in the following way,
There is no need of the classes.dex file.
So follow the following instructions carefully:
Download the latest version of dex2jar i was able to google it and get the latest one from sourceforge.
just in case if you didnt get it http://sourceforge.net/projects/dex2jar/
drop your apk file inside the dex2jar folder.
open command prompt[win user] and navigate to that folder where you dropped the apk file.
enter this command d2j-dex2jar.bat someApk.apk and you will get the jar file[read the jar file using jd-ui tool]
for mac users refer this[point 4 in the link] for suitable terminal command http://sourceforge.net/p/dex2jar/wiki/UserGuide/
Use the command
d2j-dex2jar classes.dex
instead of
dex2jar classes.dex
Also make sure that u extracted the dex2jar file in the same folder as your apk source files kept in step 1 of given example.
If you are using dex2jar-2.x jar file than it is creating problem. Try to download dex2jar-0.0.9.15 jar file and then try that command.
Here are the steps I used:
unzipped both apk folder & dex2jar folder
Created a New Folder
Combined all apk & dex2jar files into the new folder
Opened command prompt & changed my directory pointing to the new folder name
in command prompt, I typed d2j-dex2jar classes.dex, Hit Enter
....this created a new file in my new folder named classes-dex2jar.jar
I had the same problem and I have solved it, the file which you download from the GitHub isn't actually compiled so you would have to compile it first, rather than compiling, download this zip file from https://sourceforge.net/projects/dex2jar/files/dex2jar-2.0.zip/download and do the exact same process told(in the answer you are referring in your question) and you will get a jar file as your output. This file has already compiled all the resources for you so you wouldn't have to do this work manually!
I had extracted both apk and dex in different folders. On copying the extracted files in the same folder and running
dex2jar classex.dex
it worked.
Even after all those answers if some people having problem go to folder
dex2jar-0.0.9.15\dex-tools\src\main\bin
here you have both the dex2jar.bat/sh and d2j-dex2jar.bat/sh files are present there.
move your classes.dex and use the any of those command.
For me problem with the path, the correct path is C:\Users\username\Desktop\foldername\dex2jar>d2j-dex2jar classes.dex
I solved it by first downloading dex2jar-0.0.9.1 jar file and not the latest one. Then i used the following command
d2j-dex2jar.bat classes.dex and make sure that you open the command window in the dex2jar-0.0.9.15 directory. A shortcut to open the cmd there is to open the directory and then press shift and right click anywhere inside the directory window. Then go to open command window here.
1) Download dex2jar from this link and extract in your working directory.
2) In the extracted folder open command prompt and enter d2j-dex2jar ..\classes.dex.
You will get classes-dex2jar.jar in the current folder.

Reverse engineering from an APK file to a project

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?
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:
Windows:
$ d2j-dex2jar.bat demo.apk
dex2jar demo.apk -> ./demo-dex2jar.jar
MacOS / Linux:
$ d2j-dex2jar.sh -f demo.apk -o demo.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:
Then you can use other tools to retrieve the AndroidManifest.xml and resource files (like images, translations, etc...) from the APK file.
Apktool
$ java -jar apktool.jar -q decode -f demo.apk -o outputDir
AXMLParser
$ apkinfo demo.apk
NinjaDroid
$ ninjadroid demo.apk --all --extract
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 "save all sources" 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 "appName".apk ("appName" 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
No software & No too much steps..
Just upload your APK & 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 & 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 & 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
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.
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.
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
Try this tool: https://decompile.io, it runs on iPhone/iPad/Mac
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.

apktool decompiler missing xml files in res folder

I am using apktool to decompile the apk to get the res file. I downloaded the apktool and used command (apktool –d myapp.apk), it is extracting the res file but in value folder some xml files are missing.Please let me know the solution.Thanks..
Just open APK with Winrar and you'll find the stuff there.
The error "Public symbol string/xyz declared here is not defined" is telling you that the edit you made is not defined in the string.xml. You will have to edit the string.xml also.
Could be related to the issue tracked here!
A more interesting point about this problem is explained by owner of apktool2.0 beta release here!
I get a feeling that the problem you are facing is because of the apk being built using older aapt and you are building using newer aapt. Try getting the aapt version using which the apk was built and see if apktool helps your case.

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