3 Simple Steps to Decompile Android Mobile Apps (APK)

March 19, 2014 by Ajitesh Kumar · 2 Comments


 
The article represents 3 simple steps to decompile an Android mobile app.

Following are different tools that will be needed to decompile the android downloadable apk file to Java files:

  • Dex2Jar: The tools reads .dex files and convert the same to smali files.
  • JD-GUI: A standalone graphical utility that displays Java source codes of *.class files

Following are set of things I did to decompile android mobile application (apk files).

  • Download the android version of mobile application. The android version comes with apk extension.
  • Execute following command with dex2jar application to extract mobile apps files with apk extension in form of *smali files: d2j-dex2jar.bat <appname>.apk
  • Execute following command with JD-GUI application: jd-gui.exe <appname>-dex2jar.jar

From executing JD-GUI command, what you get is Java source code file which could be viewed and studied. Following is the screenshot of JD-GUI tool displaying WhatsApp code.

JD-GUI Displaying WhatsApp Code

fig: JD-GUI Displaying WhatsApp Code

 

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Ajitesh Kumar
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Ajitesh Kumar

I have been recently working in the area of Data analytics including Data Science and Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I am also passionate about different technologies including programming languages such as Java/JEE, Javascript, Python, R, Julia, etc, and technologies such as Blockchain, mobile computing, cloud-native technologies, application security, cloud computing platforms, big data, etc. For latest updates and blogs, follow us on Twitter. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin. Check out my latest book titled as First Principles Thinking: Building winning products using first principles thinking. Check out my other blog, Revive-n-Thrive.com
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