Extract Android APK file and Decompile it

The following steps are for extracting Android APK file and decompile it to get the source code. All of the steps are performed on command lines except the last step. You need to have Android SKD installed, connected your Android device to your computer and know how to use the command line window, aka Terminal windows on Mac or Linux.

1. Find the package name of the app, where app_name is the actual app name, you can also find the package name from goole play store where you download the app.

adb shell pm list package | grep app_name

2. Get the full path name of the APK file for the app, where com.example.someapp should be replaced with the package name you found from the previous step.

adb shell pm path com.example.someapp

3. Pull the APK file from the Android device, where /data/app/com.example.someapp.apk should be replaced with the APK path you found from step 2.

adb pull /data/app/com.example.someapp.apk ./

4.Decompile the APK file to get the source code from this website (http://www.decompileandroid.com/) or any other APK extract tool you might know.