Decompiling Android apk

Question

I have already compiled android application(.apk file). I want to change it, to show splash screen before starting. Can I do this without any source code?

Decompiling an apk is way more time consuming than just creating another apk after modifying the source. — user1092042, Jun 11 '12 at 12:23
@user1092042 such claims are usually just excuses not to say "I'm stealing this app from my competitor" — Kristopher Micinski, Jun 11 '12 at 12:36
First of all; do you have permission to modify the application from its creator? If so, you are probably best of asking for the source directly. — Jave, Jun 11 '12 at 13:03
Please follow this link. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3593420/android-getting-source-code-from-an-apk-file — jigspatel, Jun 11 '12 at 12:21

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 11 '12 at 12:40

Not really.

Decompiling is not a direct process. You lose a large amount of information in the compilation process (variable names get thrown away, comments get thrown out, etc...). For Android:

An APK is simply a zip file with a set of classes and resources.
Those classes are compiled into a .dex file.
That .dex file contains code which is somewhat like Java virtual machine code.
You can translate dex to jars using the tool dex2jar.
After doing this, you can simply using a Java decompiler.

However, as your original question asks, modifying the code this way is basically impossible, produces an unmaintainable pile of horrible code. It will take you a long time to do this as well, partly understanding how the decompiled code works (as there won't be any comments or intermediate variable names), and then modify that...

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

0

See this question.

First, an apk file is just a modified jar file. So the real question is can they decompile the dex files inside. The answer is sort of.

So it would be easiest if you just modded the source code you used to compile your .APK

edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

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answered Jun 11 '12 at 12:21

MrEngineer13

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Decompiling Android apk

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