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May be the easy one to see the source: In Android studio 2.3, Build -> Analyze APK -> Select the apk that you want to decompile . You will see it's source code.
From the Google Play Store, copy the URL of the app you want to extract. Next, head to this web tool in your browser and paste the URL. Select “Generate Download Link.” This web app will then automatically extract the APK file and provide you with the relevant link to access it.
An APK file contains all of a program's code (such as .dex files), resources, assets, certificates, and manifest file. As is the case with many file formats, APK files can have any name needed, but it may be required that the file name ends in the file extension for being recognized as such.
Just open your browser, find the APK file you want to download, and tap it – you should then be able to see it downloading on the top bar of your device. Once it's downloaded, open Downloads, tap on the APK file and tap Yes when prompted. The app will begin installing on your device.
Actually the apk file is just a zip archive, so you can try to rename the file to theappname.apk.zip and extract it with any zip utility (e.g. 7zip).
The androidmanifest.xml file and the resources will be extracted and can be viewed whereas the source code is not in the package - just the compiled .dex file ("Dalvik Executable")
It's shipped with Android Studio now. Just go to Build/Analyze APK... then select your APK :)
While unzipping will reveal the resources, the AndroidManifest.xml will be encoded. apktool can – among lots of other things – also decode this file.
To decode the application App.apk into the folder App, run
apktool decode App.apk App
apktool is not included in the official Android SDK, but available using most packet repositories.
There is also zzos. (Full disclosure: I wrote it). It only decompiles the actual resources, not the dex part (baksmali, which I did not write, does an excellent job of handling that part).
Zzos is much less known than apktool, but there are some APKs that are better handled by it (and vice versa - more on that later). Mostly, APKs containing custom resource types (not modifiers) were not handled by apktool the last time I checked, and are handled by zzos. There are also some cases with escaping that zzos handles better.
On the negative side of things, zzos (current version) requires a few support tools to install. It is written in perl (as opposed to APKTool, which is written in Java), and uses aapt for the actual decompilation. It also does not decompile attrib resources yet (which APKTool does).
The meaning of the name is "aapt", Android's resource compiler, shifted down one letter.
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