This guide explains how to use Android Debug Bridge (ADB) commands to install and uninstall APKs, list installed packages, and start or stop applications on a connected device, providing essential tools for mobile developers and testers.
This guide demonstrates how to strip splash-screen ads from an Android game by decompiling the APK, locating and altering the launch activity in AndroidManifest.xml, and recompiling the app, offering a practical reverse-engineering workflow for mobile developers.
APKDeepLens is a Python‑based tool that automatically scans Android APK files for security flaws, covering the OWASP Top 10 mobile risks and providing detailed, actionable reports for developers, pentesters, and security researchers.
This guide explains how to set up Kivy on macOS and Linux, create a simple Python hello‑world mobile app, test it, install and use Buildozer to package the app into an Android APK, and troubleshoot common build issues, providing full command‑line examples and code snippets.
This article explains how the Android resources.arsc file is generated, identifies the problem of duplicate and uncompressed image resources in multi‑module projects, and presents a Gradle‑based solution that inserts a custom task after processReleaseResources to deduplicate resources, compress images using pngquant, guetzli and cwebp, and repack the .ap_ files, resulting in significant APK size reduction.
This guide explains how to set up the Kivy framework, write a simple Python app, install required dependencies on macOS, Linux, and CentOS, and use Buildozer to package the app into an Android APK, including troubleshooting tips for common build errors.
This article details the systematic reduction of the JD Finance Android app's APK size from 117 MB to 74 MB between 2019 and 2022, covering background analysis, APK and SDK component breakdown, a series of optimization techniques—including image processing, resource inlining, compression tools, dynamic SO loading, and pluginization—plus governance, results, and future plans.
DeWu reduces its APK size by removing unused plugin resources, compressing images with WebP, Guetzli, PNGQuant and Gifsicle, deduplicating and obfuscating ARSC entries, applying 7‑zip compression, delivering large assets dynamically, and continuously cleaning unused resources through compile‑time checks and runtime scanning.
Android reverse engineering involves extracting an APK, decompiling it with tools like apktool, dex2jar, or JADX, analyzing and modifying Smali or Java code, recompiling and signing the package with jarsigner, and testing the changes, while using adb commands to retrieve the original file and emphasizing deeper analysis for robust security.
Facing rapid growth of its Android app size beyond 117 MB, JD Finance implemented a comprehensive APK slimming project in 2022, analyzing APK components, SDKs, and ZIP structure, then applying image optimization, R‑file inlining, resource obfuscation, dynamic SO loading, and build‑time configurations to reduce the package to 74 MB and improve download conversion rates.
This tutorial explains how to set up the Kivy framework on macOS and Linux, write a simple Python hello‑world app, test the installation, install and configure Buildozer, and use it to package the app into an Android APK while addressing common build issues.
The workflow extracts PAD assets from an AAB, builds a universal APK with bundletool, runs the legacy APK split pipeline, then reassembles a new AAB by merging the split base module with the saved PAD zip, preserving Play Asset Delivery for Google Play compliance.
This article details Baidu's multi‑step Android APK resource‑size reduction strategy, covering the structure of APK resources, built‑in AAPT2 optimizations, custom path and filename shortening, resource‑name collapsing, sparse entry encoding, image compression, duplicate‑resource handling, and the impact of AAB and Jetpack Compose on overall package size.
The article details Baidu App’s third‑stage Android APK size reduction, explaining the res/ and assets structure, reviewing AGP’s OptimizeResources, ShrinkResources and new flags, and describing a custom AAPT2‑based tool that shortens paths and filenames, removes extensions, collapses names, uses sparse encoding, integrates third‑party guards and image‑compression techniques to significantly shrink the package.
This article details a comprehensive, step‑by‑step approach to reducing Android APK size—including library pruning, resource compression, class file optimization, and automated monitoring—to keep app packages lightweight and prevent size regression over successive releases.
This article walks through using the Kivy framework and Buildozer tool to create a simple Python mobile app, covering environment setup on macOS and CentOS, writing a hello‑world program, testing it, packaging it into an APK, and troubleshooting common build issues.
An AOSP commit proposed by a Xiaomi engineer to prohibit shell extraction of installed APKs—citing potential IP leakage—was rejected after receiving only the author’s support and two opposing votes, with reviewers arguing that such restrictions are ineffective, could be bypassed, and should be handled via DRM or device‑specific policies.
This guide walks you through using AndroidKiller and a virtual emulator to decompile an APK, identify and modify the main activity in AndroidManifest.xml, recompile the app, and verify that the splash advertisement is permanently removed.
The Baidu App team applied a systematic, sustainable approach—combining Dex, resource, and native‑library optimizations with tools such as R8, ProGuard, AndResGuard, and custom compression pipelines—to shrink the APK by several megabytes, improve download conversion, and establish reusable mechanisms for future builds.
This article introduces DexInjector, a tool for directly instrumenting Android APK dex files to insert logging, performance monitoring, and third‑party hooks without recompiling, explains the underlying technical research, design choices, implementation details, handling of method limits, string jumbo, obfuscation, class conflicts, and provides code examples and workflow diagrams.
This guide explains why Android apps must adopt 64‑bit architectures, outlines market mandates, describes the ABI landscape, shows how to detect missing 64‑bit native libraries with Gradle scripts or the EasyPrivacy plugin, and provides step‑by‑step instructions for updating build configurations, testing, and publishing compliant APKs or App Bundles.
The platform optimizes Android APK size by shrinking resources, compressing images, filtering native libraries, and applying selective byte‑code reductions, then continuously monitors package composition, trends, and business‑line usage, alerting teams to abnormal growth while preserving functionality for large‑scale apps.
This article investigates the Android dex2oat compilation restrictions introduced for targetSdkVersion ≥ 29, analyzes their impact on app performance, explores SELinux enforcement, and presents a practical solution using system commands and binder calls to trigger dex2oat compilation for both primary and secondary APKs, improving load and runtime speed.
This article details Alipay's comprehensive AndroidX migration for its Android app, covering the deprecation of Android Support, industry adoption statistics, technical challenges, a modular adaptation strategy, tooling such as Jetifier and a custom bx command‑line utility, and the resulting impact on build time and product output.
Microsoft’s Windows 11 now runs Android apps natively through an Amazon Appstore integration, while Amazon’s adoption of the newer AAB packaging format offers developers smaller, device‑optimized downloads and distinct differences from Google Play’s requirements.
This article breaks down the Android APK installation lifecycle—pre‑install, install, and post‑install—explaining each stage, offering command‑line methods, code examples, performance tweaks, and troubleshooting tips to help developers understand and optimize the whole process.
This article describes a method for analyzing Android APK size at the library level by extracting and parsing Gradle intermediate merge files, mapping resources, assets, native libraries and Java resources to their originating libraries, and linking them to maintenance teams for precise package‑size reporting.
This article explains how to perform static analysis of Android APK files with Python, covering environment preparation, unpacking the APK, extracting basic metadata, analyzing classes and methods using the Androguard library, and generating a method call graph for deeper reverse‑engineering insights.
This guide explains how to configure an Android project, write Python upload scripts for Fir.im and Pgyer, create a Jenkinsfile with checkout, build, and upload stages, set up Jenkins global variables and pipeline parameters, and run a full build‑test cycle to publish APKs via QR codes.
This guide demonstrates how to clone the HelloWorld Android Gradle repository, build the project using Gradle, locate the generated debug and release APK files, upload them to Fir for distribution, and verify the installation, providing all necessary commands and output details.
This guide explains how to configure an Android project, write Python scripts for uploading APKs to Fir.im and Pgyer, create a Jenkinsfile with checkout, build, and upload stages, and set up Jenkins global variables and pipeline parameters for automated CI/CD deployment.
This article explains why reducing Android APK size is crucial for user experience, introduces the Matrix ApkChecker tool with its fourteen analysis tasks, demonstrates command‑line usage and configuration, and shows how to integrate it into a Jenkins CI pipeline for automated reporting and historical trend analysis.
This article explains how to launch an Android 10 APK by reflecting the shellCommand method of ActivityManager, detailing the changes from startActivityAndWait, the required reflection steps, implementation code, and demonstration results on Android devices.
This article explains how to use Python to analyze Android APK packages, extract basic statistics, identify optimizable resources such as oversized images, duplicate files, and unused assets, and provide data‑driven guidance for reducing APK size and improving distribution efficiency.
This article explains how Android parses the AndroidManifest, assigns UID and updates permissions during APK installation, covering system boot installation, PMS‑driven third‑party, ADB and Market installations, and provides code snippets to illustrate the underlying mechanisms.
This tutorial shows how to clone a sample Android Gradle repository, build both debug and release APKs using the Gradle wrapper, and upload the generated packages to the Fir platform for testing on mobile devices.
This guide explains how to set up Android project packaging paths, write Python upload scripts for fir.im and Pgyer, configure a Jenkinsfile with checkout, build, and upload stages, and define Jenkins global variables and parameters for automated CI/CD of mobile apps.
The article explains how resource obfuscation with andResGuard removes META‑INF service files needed for the Android Main dispatcher, causing coroutines to silently fail after withContext calls, and shows that preserving the META‑INF/services directory restores proper coroutine execution.
This guide explains what Anbox is, how to install it on various Linux distributions using snap, PPA or AUR, sets up required kernel modules and ADB, and shows step‑by‑step how to download APKs and install Android apps like YouTube and Firefox inside Anbox.
The article explains how iQiyi created the open‑source dexSplitter tool to analyze Android APK composition, generate per‑module sub‑dex files using ProGuard/R8 mappings, and continuously monitor size growth, offering clear module‑level size statistics despite a modest overall dex size increase.
This article presents a detailed overview of Android app security threats, the essential components of an Android project, the full APK build and decompilation process, and a range of reverse‑engineering tools and protection strategies—including Smali analysis, SO manipulation, and signing bypass—to help developers safeguard their applications against piracy and data tampering.
The article explains Android’s APK Signature Scheme v2—introduced in Android Studio 2.2—its performance and integrity benefits over v1, details the signing block structure and verification steps, and demonstrates how to embed and retrieve custom channel data within the v2 block while preserving successful verification.
This guide explains how Android developers can understand APK structure and apply a range of techniques—such as removing unused resources, compressing images, using vector drawables, and optimizing native code—to significantly reduce the size of their application packages and improve download and install performance.
This article explains various multi‑channel packaging methods for Android APKs, compares traditional Gradle productFlavors and ApkTool approaches, and introduces efficient V1‑ and V2‑based channel insertion techniques that avoid rebuilding or re‑signing, while providing integration steps for the ApkChannelPackage plugin.
This article provides a step‑by‑step tutorial on setting up the development environment, installing essential tools, and performing APK reverse engineering and security analysis on Android applications, covering JDK, SDK, NDK, Apktool, Dex2jar, JD‑GUI, IDA, WinHex, and Eclipse.
