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Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

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Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#81
post #80
post #4

If you haven't tried Jadx [1], give it a shot. It's by far the easiest way to reverse Android APKs. It doesn't do patching or reassembly, but I used it for reversing the Delong'hi APK for longshot [2][3] and the quality of output was fantastic. Note that scripts like this are extremely useful, but in the long term they're cobbling together a lot of tools and will become brittle or difficult to use across versions. I…

Jadx is useful for decompilation, yes — it produces the best results of all the decompilers I tried because it works with dalvik bytecode directly (vs converting it into regular JVM classes). If I need to patch an apk though, I'd first use jadx to find the place I need to change, but then it's apktool for actual patching in bytecode because it disassembles and reassembles dex files losslessly. Java decompilers aren't…

Totally agree with this. I spend most of my time reading and only occasionally patching, so Jadx is perfect.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#82
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS's UI/UX is far more responsive and consistent in reaction times and input latency than Android. I suspect Android's use of Java to be the main culprit, but not really sure on that... For browsing, it means that even phones which perform better in CPU bound benchmarks than my old iPhone 11 have random UI stutters & non-smooth scrolling in browser mostly while content is still loading, and these make me miss-click…

This right here is it for me. I was the same, in high school there was a 50/50 chance if on a given day the rom I had installed could actually make phone calls, but I didn't mind... but obviously priority change over time. Switching the iPhone I was struck by how damn smooth everything was. Years of XDA tweaks couldn't touch my iPhone 6 out of the box despite specs I had always seen as inferior. My tongue in cheek sa…

[deleted]

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#83
post #48

Can this be used to create a version of YouTube with no ads?

https://newpipe.net/

IIRC it should be noted that newpipe is more resistant to getting taken down because they're utilizing public api data and not altering youtube's app. Not sure if the new revanced is still a modded youtube apk.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#84
post #15
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i used to be an android poweruser in high school and college, I rooted my phones, played around with lots of custom roms, had a terminal emulator and full power of arm debian installed in a chroot environment, tried different keyboard apps, launchers, and all other customization possibilities... then I started working full-time and had way less free time and realized 99% of the time I now use my phone to read news si…

Sounds like a step back, both in terms of creativity achieved by tinkering, and a downgrade of the quality of photos and videos.

Yeah also on Android you can get extensions on firefox, such as bypass paywalls, which makes android nice for paywalled news.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#85
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on Android since 2011, but reasons I'd go for iphone would be phone dimensions, consistent photo quality and long updates Android seems to fixed only one of them (updates) while becoming more and more locked as iOS, quality photos with good shutter speed are offered only by pixel with bad availability in most of the world and pretty bad VFM besides A models

I switched to iPhone this summer for that very reason, after maybe a decade on Android. Coming from the Essential PH-1 which I’d grown tired of maintaining past it’s official support life and looking for something the same size or smaller, I settled on one of the few options on the market that offered both small size and performance: the iPhone 13 mini. Barring a vastly inferior notification experience, it’s a stella…

Zenfone looks good only on paper - horrible shutter speed (main disadvantage of Samsung), unreliable hardware compared to other brands, unoptimized software and no long updates guaranteed plus they ask more for it than Samsung with trade in bonuses. They could fix the software part, but I don't think more reliable hardware is realistic and what's the point of great phone if it breaks.

If someone doesn't mind slow shutter and mediocre battery life then S22 is good option for smaller phone with good camera, updates and good VFM with trade in bonus (could be had around 500€ with any phone from drawer).

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#86
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know much about this, but since microG reimplements the GooglePlay API.. doesn't that mean it must phone back to Google servers? If you want privacy, I assume you shouldn't use any of these?

For absolute Privacy (If that's even possible without going off-grid), Then yes. But if you need to use apps which you trust but it depends upon proprietary Google bits then microG is the best alternative now. microG > Open Gapps > Gapps e.g. Signal needs GCM to send notifications, If it doesn't find one it will revert to pull notifications. Pull notifications are unreliable and are subject to being killed by battery…

One thing that not many people know: you don't need to have a Google account to use GCM/FCM even with official Gapps. You can simply not sign in to Google play and push will still work.

It's still running tons of spyware yes but it's an alternative on phones where MicroG is not an option. Eg Samsung phones with Knox enabled.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#88
The problem with tools that rely on apktool is that they tend to fail to patch the most sophisticatedly obfuscated apps typically banking apps. This is because they abuse implementation details in the Android source to essentially make it possible to unpack the app while installing, but impossible to repackage it (usually using sketchy non-utf8 characters and broken Manifests). The only way I found to patch these apps is by making them debuggable and then injecting Frida at run-time. This is possible by delicately patching the Manifest as precisely as possible. Full disclosure, I made a Python script without any dependencies: https://github.com/julKali/makeDebuggable

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#89
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among the top 5 deathbed regrets is working too much. Many indicators of quality of life face diminishing returns past a $30k/yr (2005) threshold.

Is it more socially acceptable or expected in society to say 'I worked too much' rather than 'my family and wife were dull and annoying and took up loads of time, I wish I had got better at my passions / done more research instead' or similar platitudes? I imagine some people who genuinely think stuff similar the latter won't say it, and others may have it written off as deathbed delirium / psychosis and ignored if t…

I believe them.

I remember calculating the optimal amount to work, to maximize non-work non-sleep healthy life expectancy, and it was somewhere around 2 hours per day in my case. Accounting for retirement, it'd be around 4 hours.

If you work more than optimal, you lose free time.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#90
post #4

If you haven't tried Jadx [1], give it a shot. It's by far the easiest way to reverse Android APKs. It doesn't do patching or reassembly, but I used it for reversing the Delong'hi APK for longshot [2][3] and the quality of output was fantastic. Note that scripts like this are extremely useful, but in the long term they're cobbling together a lot of tools and will become brittle or difficult to use across versions. I…

Did you do this just for fun ( which is awesome ) or do you have some longer term goal?
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