About APKS file format

What is an APKS file? An APKS file is an APK set archive. It contains a set of .APK files that are optimized for different Android devices. APKS files are renamed .ZIP files, so you can extract the APK files they contain with any Zip-decompression utility.

What is the Android App Bundle (AAB)? Launched in 2018, the Android App Bundle (AAB) is a publishing format for Android that is supported by Indus Appstore and other app stores, and by build tools such as Android Studio, Bazel, Buck, Cocos Creator, Gradle, Unity, and Unreal.

How to create APKS files? Typically, Android developers create APKS files with bundletool, a command-line utility used to build and manage Android App Bundles (.AAB files). If you haven’t already, download bundletool from the GitHub repository.

To create an APKS file with bundletool developers use the following command: bundletool build-apks –bundle=/MyApp/my_app.aab –output=/MyApp/my_app.apks –ks=/MyApp/keystore.jks –ks-pass=file:/MyApp/keystore.pwd –ks-key-alias=MyKeyAlias –key-pass=file:/MyApp/key.pwd

Developers can then use the device-specific APK files that their APKS file contains to test their app across a variety of Android devices (before uploading the finished app to the Indus Appstore). To use bundletool to install an app from an APKS file to a connected device, developers can enter: bundletool install-apks –apks=app.apks

What’s the difference between AABs and APKS? App bundles are only for publishing and cannot be installed on Android devices. The Android package (APK) is Android’s installable, executable format for apps. App bundles must be processed by a distributor into APKs so that they can be installed on devices.

How much work is required to use an AAB? For most apps, building an AAB is equivalent effort to building an APK, since it simply involves choosing AAB instead of APK at build time. For some apps, there might be some changes needed to get the full benefits of AABs.

Does the AAB prevent users from “sideloading” apps? No, AABs do not prevent users from installing APKs from any source. Since AAB is just a publishing format, they don’t change how the Android platform works.