Parse the apk file. How to install apk file on computer

Not even all owners of devices with the Android operating system know what an APK file is. What can we say about those who have never used phones or tablets with this system. However, even owners of Windows computers can get a lot of useful things out of APK files.

First, let's understand what files are.

Android Package is a file extension that is used to distribute programs for any device on which Android is installed. In Windows, to install the program you need to find the .exe file. In Android, you need to find an APK for this. Such files are distributed through sites with software for phones or on special forums.

Android Package is an archive that stores the application itself and all the files necessary for its operation. .

Why are they needed and why can they be useful to owners of simple computers?

Many interesting and unusual applications have already been written for devices with Android OS. Most of them do not have a desktop version. In this case, if you want to play your favorite game on your phone, but you don’t have it at hand, you will need to install the APK file on your computer.

Another situation where you might need to open an APK on your computer is to view its contents. This may be necessary to partially change it. For example, translate it into the desired language.

Important! The files we are interested in do not have any additional encryption. An APK file is nothing more than an archive in which application data is stored.

View content

Now we will learn how to view the contents of a file, look at its structure and, if necessary, make changes to it. So we need:

You can also unpack this archive to your computer and access it at any time.

But most are still interested in how to start using applications on their computer. This will be a little more difficult to do, but still quite simple. Everyone can do this.

A telephone is also a small computer. The only difference is the fundamentally different software. Therefore, you will need to install a special program - emulator

As the name implies, such a program creates a system running Android on your device. You will be able to download, install any applications on the emulator and use them directly through your computer.

Android emulators are becoming more and more popular and in demand due to the growing number of unique applications. Now several developers can offer a high-quality and stable emulator. Let's look at several emulators and choose the one most suitable for your tasks.

The most famous, widespread and used emulator is Bluestacks.

To begin with, we will open our file on it.

Important! Bluestacks is ideal for opening games, and is most often used for this. The disadvantages of the application include an overly cluttered interface in some places and a large amount of unnecessary information, which will not be useful to everyone.

Nox App Player

But this program is poorly suited for games. They often display graphic elements incorrectly. In this emulator, the developers focused on working with programs. You can get root in a couple of clicks. If you want to open the APK with this application, then you need:

Viewing content on Android

To view the contents of the apk file, and not install it completely, we will be helped by a powerful program Apk editor for Android. So we need:

Installing smartphone apps on your device is not that difficult. Any user can do this.

Video - How to open an apk file on a computer

Having discovered a file with an unknown extension among Windows files, we often become despondent. The devil knows what this is so unrecognized by the “axis”. Such thoughts come to the minds of many people who see the “apk” extension for the first time. Having an apk file, how can I open this thing on Windows?

Before answering this question, it is necessary to understand what kind of animal is in front of us. The “.apk” file format was developed by Google to save executable Android OS applications in this format. The very concept of storing programs and data in one archive is not new. Even at the dawn of the spread of personal computers, packaging programs in an archive was very popular. To launch such applications, you didn’t even need to unpack this archive - the system tools did it on their own. This technology is in circulation among developers and users of various types of emulators. Therefore, the idea of ​​Google is not something unusual or unexpected.

“Apk” simply stands for “Android Package”. This is an ordinary archive that can be opened by almost any archiver available for Windows.

The archive contains the following application components:

• Source code of the program.
• Application resources, such as images, sounds, etc.
• A special file called manifest.

Those wishing to open such a file with an archiver will need to follow our further instructions.

We perform an autopsy

Since apk is an archive, we will try to open it with an archiver program. Many multifunctional archiver programs have been developed for Windows that can create and open an archive of almost any format. APK files are no exception. Let us point out two such archivers for Windows that successfully cope with this task: WinRar and 7-zip. If the first of these programs is commercial, then the second is completely free, and you can download it directly from the website of its developer - Igor Pavlov - at: http://www.7-zip.org/ or http://7-zip .org.ua/ru/ .

Install the 7-zip archiver in Windows (unless, of course, this famous program has already found a home on your computer).

Right-click on the required apk file. The context menu should appear as usual.

Select the menu item “7-zip” - a submenu will appear with a choice of action options.

We ask the archiver to open the archive or extract data from the archive. This can be done in different ways by selecting one or another submenu item, for example, the “Open archive” item (only to view the contents) or the “Unpack” item. The user will be prompted to specify a folder for unpacking and other optional parameters.

That's all you need to know to open a file with the "apk" extension.

Basically, open the apk format on your computer impossible. It is not designed to run on PC. This is the extension of the installation file of games or applications for the system Android. However, you can use some emulator applications, which allow you to work with apk on a personal computer.

The Android operating system is largely different from Windows, so when running emulators they consume a huge amount resources. So you won’t be able to run the apk on weak computers.

How and how to open an apk extension on a computer

One of the well-known programs for opening this format is Nox app Player. Complete player free, you can download it from the official website. There shouldn't be any problems with the installation - everything is very simple. Let's launch installer and follow further instructions.

When the installation is complete you will have to wait some time until the Android OS starts. This may take from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on power PC. After this, the desktop will appear.

The player allows you to set many parameters, including ROOTrights, why you need to go to settings(gear icon in the upper right corner)

We move the corresponding switch to positionON.

To run the apk file, you need to on the right side of the screen click to the loading icon.

The program will kindly inform you that you can use the usual one to launch the apk drag and drop. Unfortunately, this function is unstable, so we agree with the notification and continue.

Now it remains choose required file in standard Windows Explorer.

Then the standard will begin installation apk for Android. When the process is completed, the application shortcut will appear on the desktop. Costs notice that applications do not always launch the first time. Sometimes you have to launch them again.

To take advantage specialized functions of Android, just pay attention to the panel on the right.

How to open an apk file on Android

As mentioned above, the apk format is specifically developed only for Android, so there should be no problems with launching applications. Exists There are two ways to install files of this format:

1. Installation from PlayMarket
2. Installation manually.

First The option is quite simple - open the market and looking for required application. Then we launch it installation.

In the second case, the file is necessary throw off to the phone. It doesn’t matter exactly how to do it - you can take advantage Bluetooth, connect the device to a PC as a flash drive, or use any other way. After this it remains find file through the manager and run it.

You can encounter an APK extension file, for example, if you decide to install an application on your computer that you used on your tablet. After downloading a file from the Internet, the time will come to think about how to open the apk file on your computer?

What is a fileAPKand its purpose

APK (abbreviation for Android Package) is a format of archived application files for Android. Any application written for Android, after compilation, is packaged into one file of this extension. The file name can be anything, but the extension must be .APK.

Encryption is not used when storing data in the archive of this type.

Thus, each .apk file is an archive that can be executed by DalvikVM (virtual machine) and can be installed not only on Android OS.

APK files are stored in the system in the /data/app directory, which is accessible only through Explorer.

To develop your own applications, you can use Google's Android SDK, a development environment.

You can download files of this extension either from where they are stored, or on third-party resources on the Internet (which is undesirable). Once downloaded, you can manually install the application contained in the apk file on your tablet or smartphone. It is not recommended to install applications from unknown sources - they may contain malicious code, while all applications available through Google Play are tested and signed. The procedure for installing the Android APK application on a tablet or smartphone via USB is described below:

1. You need to copy the .APK file to the device in any convenient way (via USB, transfer via Wi-Fi, etc.);
2. Using the file manager, go to the directory where the application was saved;
3. Open the selected apk file.

A number of manufacturers disable the ability to install applications from unknown sources. If you need to enable this feature, go to Settings. Select the “Security” section, check the “Allow installation of applications not obtained from the Market” option.

Video tutorial on APK file format

View file contentsAPK

Wondering which program to open an apk file to see what's inside?

Since .APK files use compression algorithms similar to ZIP, the contents of such archives can be obtained using almost any archiver - .

To view the contents of a file using one of the specified archivers, you need to change the APK extension to ZIP.

File installationAPKto computer

Are you wondering how to open an apk file on your computer? Below is a list that will help you with the installation - it will show you how to open the arc file under any required operating system.

So, how to open APK files under different platforms:

Where else can you encounter files?APK?

Files of this extension can be used by other applications and services discussed below.

1. As a file for the GameSpy arcade game service. This extension is used in a shareware MMO game. The utility, which allows players to find available multiplayer games, connect to them, and communicate between players, uses APK extension files that store service data.
2. Storage of Active Tutor projects - an environment that provides tools for multimedia development (Creator - 4C Soft Inc.).
3. Activity data storage. APK files are also used in the train simulation game (Microsoft Train Simulator), released back in 2001.

So, we looked at the APK file format - what is it used for, what program to open the arc file, where else can you use files of this extension. We hope the information will be useful to readers.

I mentioned the SmartAPKTool application. It can extract, zip and sign modified apk files. Its advantage is the presence of a graphical interface. However, there is a serious drawback. SmartAPKTool has not been updated for a long time, and the program does not correctly unpack and pack applications for the latest versions of Android. Therefore, here I will try to explain how to use the application for these purposes apktool.

Note 1.
The SmartAPKTool program is still convenient to use for signing collected apk files.
Note 2.
Links to the programs mentioned in the article are ↓

Program apktool does not have a graphical interface. This is a disadvantage for those who are not used to working with the command line. But there is also a plus: unlike SmartAPKTool, we will see all the errors, which means we will know what to fix.

Let's download two archives: one common for all systems, the other for our system (Windows in the example):

Let's unpack both archives into the same empty folder (in our example, C:\apktool\). Its content should look like this:

From now on we can use the program apktool.

Note 3.
Users of 64-bit versions of Linux will need to install the ia32-libs package:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

In the same folder we put the file that we need to unpack. For example, let it be called orig.apk
Press and hold the Shift key and right-click on any empty space in the folder (do not click on files!). After that, select “Open command window”. In the console that appears, type:

apktool decode orig.apk

The file will be unpacked:

Now we have a folder with the unpacked application in the C:\apktool\ directory. It is called the same as the source file, minus the extension: C:\apktool\orig\ . We can change the source files as described in the article Android: how to install two identical applications on one phone. After we have made the changes, we will collect a copy of the application by packaging the source files into an apk:

apktool build orig result.apk

Here result.apk is the file name that we came up with for the copy build. If there are no errors, the file will be assembled:

The rest is beyond the scope of the article:

1. If there are errors during assembly, you need to find their cause and correct them.
2. All that remains is to sign the resulting result.apk file. This can be done using SmartAPKTool as mentioned above; Everything about it is intuitive. There are also other ways to sign an apk file.
3. Errors may also occur when installing a copy, during its startup or operation. They need to be caught using the adb utility included in the Android SDK.

You must sign the application, otherwise it will not install. Errors do not occur so often, and the most common problems causing them are described in the article