Download Android APKs directly from Google Play Store in Ubuntu

So I just learnt how to download Android APKs directly from the Google Play Store to backup some APK files for later use or to use them for quick install.

So I just learnt how to download Android APKs directly from the Google Play Store. This comes in handy when you want to backup some APK files for later use or to use them for quick install without using google play store on your phone. Google Play Downloader is a open source project that offers users to download the applications files directly from Google play with a visual graphic UI.

Google Play APK Downloader

Firstly, you’ll need the python-ndg-httpsclient package because of the dependencies. The Ubuntu 14.04 repository doesn’t host this package so you’ll have to download it from any of the sources listed on the page and install it on your Ubuntu. Then you can download the deb pacakage for Ubuntu from Google Play Downloader Project page. You might need other dependencies like python-requests, python-pyasn1. You can install them directly from the Ubuntu repository with the “-f” to your “apt-get install” command.

python-ndg-httpsclient

This application requires a working google account to download apps from the Google Play Store. And this also locks into the geographic limits of the Google Play Store, so you won’t be able to download applications that are not available in your country. Since your account is locked to a carrier on your account I suppose using a proxy or a VPN won’t fix that too.

Google play downloader settings

The default account currently works perfectly but if you want to add your account, you can go ahead and do so. This will probably make it download apps from the location your google account is locked to.

After that you just search for a keyword on the search bar until the application you want to download appears on the table below. Then you select one or multiple applications to download from the list and press download. That’s it, select a location to save the files in your PC and it’ll download the apk files for you.

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