Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit of a tangent, but does anyone know a reliable way to download and install Android APKs from the Play store for a device that does not have Google Play itself installed (and intentionally does not have a Google account associated with it)?

View on HN

If you have access to a rooted Android device with Play, you can pull the APKs out of the /data/app directory with adb. Not all apps are usable this way, they could be locked to a Play account, but I don't think many free apps bother with that.

Is this what you are looking for:

http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/

That's a web-based version of https://lekensteyn.nl/apk-downloader/ , and according to that site it adds spyware. Considering that the site you linked has pop-up ads for dubious downloads, that seems likely.

In any case, both of those still require having the Android device registered with a Google account.

Thank you for the information. According to the linked XDA discussion:

"Evozi's fork is based on opensource 1.4.x, with tracking code and removes validation for undownloadable APKs as a fix for new play store. Besides this, it also removes the copyright header of background.js, adds more tracking and some textual changes (adding links to his own apps and social accounts)."

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=44032616&post...

"In any case, both of those still require having the Android device registered with a Google account."

Not exactly. They require having _an_ Android device registered. As long as you've once registered a device, it will stay associated with your account. It doesn't have to be the same device as the one onto which you want to install the downloaded APK.

Wow, I had no idea about the spyware. I learned about Evozi from: http://www.labnol.org/internet/download-apk-from-google-play...

That labnol site has some great tips, and is well written, so I trust things I find there.

I'm trying to understand what this means. Does it mean that evozi has added spyware to the apks I've downloaded? I've used this to get all the apps that were not in F-droid, so I'm quite concerned.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com