How to get the .apk file of an application programmatically

Question

I want to create an application which has the following functionality. It should save its .apk file to the sdcard. Imagine I have a Button. On clicking it I have to save the .apk file of the application.

Answer 1

It is easy to do that..

1. First you get all installed applications,
2. For each one, get public source directory.
3. copy the file to the SDCard.

Note: No need to be rooted.

Here is the snippt code:

final Intent mainIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
mainIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);
List<ResolveInfo> apps = getPackageManager().queryIntentActivities(mainIntent, 0);
for (ResolveInfo info : apps) {
    File file = new File(info.activityInfo.applicationInfo.publicSourceDir);
    // Copy the .apk file to wherever
}

Answer 2

It's easy to find and and get all the installed app's apk file through a simple function. Below I wrote a method that return a HashMap Object what holds all the installed apk file's absolute path with their corresponding package name.. I hope it will be very useful to you.

private HashMap<String, String> getAllInstalledApkFiles(Context context) {
        HashMap<String, String> installedApkFilePaths = new HashMap<>();

        PackageManager packageManager = context.getPackageManager();
        List<PackageInfo> packageInfoList = packageManager.getInstalledPackages(PackageManager.SIGNATURE_MATCH);

        if (isValid(packageInfoList)) {
            for (PackageInfo packageInfo : packageInfoList) {
                ApplicationInfo applicationInfo;

                try {
                    applicationInfo = getApplicationInfoFrom(packageManager, packageInfo);

                    String packageName = applicationInfo.packageName;
                    String versionName = packageInfo.versionName;
                    int versionCode = packageInfo.versionCode;

                    File apkFile = new File(applicationInfo.publicSourceDir);
                    if (apkFile.exists()) {
                        installedApkFilePaths.put(packageName, apkFile.getAbsolutePath());
                        LogHelper.d(getClass(), packageName + " = " + apkFile.getName());
                    }
                } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException error) {
                    error.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }

        return installedApkFilePaths;
    }

---

private boolean isValid(List<PackageInfo> packageInfos) {
        return packageInfos != null && !packageInfos.isEmpty();
    }

Now you call the following method to get the apk file for a particular package name :

public File getApkFile(Context context, String packageName) {
        HashMap<String, String> installedApkFilePaths = getAllInstalledApkFiles(context);
        File apkFile = new File(installedApkFilePaths.get(packageName));
        if (apkFile.exists()) {
            return apkFile;
        }

        return null;
    }

and getApplicationInfoFrom method:

private ApplicationInfo getApplicationInfoFrom(PackageManager packageManager, PackageInfo packageInfo) {
    return packageInfo.applicationInfo;
}

Answer 3

I don't know of an official way. However, it seems like the APK is stored in /data/app with the filename of your.package.name-#.apk where your.package.name is your package name (e.g. com.google.earth) and # is usually 1 or 2, but I imagine it could go up more. Unless your device is rooted, you don't have permissions to list the files in /data/app but you should have read access to the actual file. You can try to copy that file (start with 1 and increment until you find it) to the SD card.

Alternatively, if you have internet access, you could store the APK in some web location and download it to SD card directly.

Answer 4

You can use the PackageManager and ApplicationInfo class for this purpose.

List<ApplicationInfo> packagelist = new ArrayList<>();
File file;
PackageManager packageManager = getPackageManager();
packagelist = packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
if (packagelist.size() > 0) {
        for (int i = 0; i < packagelist.size(); i++) {
            file = new File(packagelist.get(i).publicSourceDir);
   }

This is how you can get the publicSourceDir of every apk. Then you can just copy that apk in a particular folder. No ROOT required in this case.

I have created a similar app to extract the apk from both System and Installed apps. It has many more features. Attaching the link of source code and app here . Have a look at them.

View app on Google PlayStore

View Source Code on Github

Answer 5

Here's the simplest way I know on how to get the path to your applications apk file:

String classname = "com.mycompany.app.MyActivity";
String apkPath = activity.getApplication().getPackageManager().getApplicationInfo(classname, 0).sourceDir

classname is the name of your application Activity or the AppCompatActivity class.

This call would return something like this:

/data/app/com.mycompany.app.MyActivity-89lzYNI0vTAV056RT-WHBw==/base.apk

You will be able to read the file but you won't be able to write since its protected. And of course, base.apk is a jar.