📝 Dump app metadata from an APK file

(Note last modified 2025-09-10 - View change history)

The aapt command-line tool from the Android SDK build tools can be used in order to dump various metadata about an APK file:

aapt dump badging <APK file>

Some things I have found useful from the information in the past:

Quickly check the versionCode and versionName of an APK I’m looking at. Some APK downloader sites may contain release versions that mismatch with what the APK actually says.
Being able to see which minimum API level (sdkVersion) of Android is required to install it. See apilevels.com for a table on API levels and how they correspond to Android versions.

Example output:

package: name='se.voxelmanip.tensy' versionCode='1' versionName='1.0' platformBuildVersionName='15' platformBuildVersionCode='35' compileSdkVersion='35' compileSdkVersionCodename='15'
install-location:'auto'
sdkVersion:'21'
targetSdkVersion:'35'
uses-permission: name='android.permission.VIBRATE'
application-label:'Tensy'
application-icon-160:'res/GX.png'
application: label='Tensy' icon='res/GX.png'
launchable-activity: name='se.voxelmanip.tensy.GameActivity'  label='' icon=''
feature-group: label=''
  uses-gl-es: '0x20000'
  uses-feature-not-required: name='android.hardware.touchscreen'
main
other-activities
supports-screens: 'small' 'normal' 'large' 'xlarge'
supports-any-density: 'true'
locales: '--_--'
densities: '160'
native-code: 'arm64-v8a' 'armeabi-v7a' 'x86_64'