One of the favorite tools of Android developers, modders, and tweakers over the years has been Apktool, a one-stop app for “reverse engineering” an installed app on your device. With not a lot of updates over the years, we’re seeing one now and it makes the app compatible for Android Marshmallow. Good on you, developers.
So what is “reverse engineering” an app, really? Well, we usually don’t get an official app from the Google Play Store in APK (or Android package installer) file format – the Play Store kinda “hides” that process and automatically installs the app to our Android smartphones and tablets. Apktool allows you to recompile and rebuild the app as an APK installer file.
Aside from being compatible with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the app update brings with it a number of fixes for the app itself, including issues with apps that use the “.9.xml” format – now you are able to rebuild and recompile from those apps without issues, plus a number of other fixes.
Of course, you might say that this app can be used for piracy, and we don’t deny that. The app can certainly help pirates rebuild officially installed apps from the Play Store and re-distribute apps. This risk, we feel, is balanced out by the fact that the app allows 3rd party developers to study official apps and basically tinker around the code to look for features that can be improved. Download links are available at the source link below, and installation instructions here.
SOURCE: Connor Tumbleson
