July 28, 2010

By Gülay Birand

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Android, Blog

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Installing an APK on your phone using the Android SDK

Primarily, I work on the interaction design for our various Android devices at T-Mobile but there are many times I have to do QA, documentation, visual design and sometimes developery things like installing new builds and APKs (Android Package Files).

I noticed that most of the instructions I Googled are geared towards developers. They are highly-technical and are typically missing a step or two, with the assumption that the person reading them must already know those few steps. Well, most designers I know don’t know or have learned how to do this by painfully cobbling together instructions and I thought I’d share ALL of the steps involved to take the guess work out of it.

Before doing any of this though, let’s make sure you are setup correctly. I work on a Mac, so the instructions I provide will be based on this OS but if there is a request for Windows OS, I can provide that too.

1. Let’s make sure you have the latest Android SDK installed. Once you’ve done this, be sure to change the folder name to “AndroidSDK.”
2. Now go to Finder and find the folder.
3. Move the folder into the root of your user profile and place a shortcut in the sidebar under “Places.” This will make things much easier when working with the SDK.
4. Find the .apk file you are looking to install onto your phone and move it to the following path AndroidSDK > Tools

Equipment you will need:

1. Android phone.
2. Micro or mini usb cable connecting your phone to your computer.
3. SD card in your phone.

Now let’s get your phone ready:

1. Go to Settings on  your phone and under Application Settings allow Unknown Sources. If an app is not in the Market Place, you need to enable this for the install to work.
2. Also go to SD Card and Phone Storage under Settings and Disable Use for USB Storage.

Now you are all ready to take on APKs!

Installing an APK manually:

1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal
2. Now enter the following code:

$ cd AndroidSDK $ cd Tools $ ./adb remount

3. This will start adb and mount the device as a drive. Finally, you’ll want to install the app:

$./adb push [Name].apk system/app $./adb reboot

4. These two commands will install the apk and restart your device.

You can now enjoy using the app!

Next post, I’m going to tackle how to uninstall a pesky, unresponsive APK.

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Discussion

• 

  Norman Reisner said on September 26, 2010

  excellent points and the details are more precise than somewhere else, thanks.

  - Norman

• 

  Gülay Birand said on September 29, 2010

  Glad to hear it, Norman!

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