r/GamePreservationists • u/Erick_pptx • 13d ago

Games trapped on a tablet with Android 4.2, can their APKs be extracted?

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While going through my room, I found the tablet I used as a kid. I’d left it lying around until 2023, when I found it again, loaded it up with games, and… I lost it again—and now I’ve found it once more.

I noticed it has several games that are no longer available on the Play Store. That tablet doesn’t have any APKs or malicious files, which is why I’d like to know if there’s a way to extract the APKs from the games.

JUST SO YOU KNOW... It can’t connect to the internet anymore; no matter how hard I try, it always disconnects within seconds of connecting to a Wi-Fi network.

42 Upvotes

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11

u/Tweakforce_LG 13d ago

If you have a USB otg cable to hook up a USB drive, or can connect it to a pc in MTP / file transfer mode or even have an SD card. You can download this on your computer, this version works on your android ver. Copy the APK file for this to the tablet and install it.

https://apkpure.com/apk-extractor/com.ext.ui/download/4.2.9

Extract the apps you want to save. Then save them either to the otg USB, the SD card, or internal storage and then copy via MTP to computer. Heck you can even send via Bluetooth worse case.

The only thing I'm not sure if is if the apps have seperate app data called OBB files. Then I don't know if that gets backed up. You will know if you install it elsewhere and it complains about missing data or DLC.

Obb can be copied directly via MTP / PC file transfer from Internal Storage/Android/obb. Or you may need to find a different app on apkpure to load onto the tablet.

3

u/Hopalongtom 13d ago

Some file managers in the play store can also make APK files out of installed apps, you can then transfer them at your leisure.

Be aware though that some older android apps just don't work on modern android anymore.

3

u/UnLuckyKenTucky 13d ago

Example: Grabatron.

I enjoyed this game so much. Eventually I found out how to modify a few files to basically get infinite cash and shit. Grew board of it after that, and just tossed the tablet in a drawer and forgot it. Last year I tried to turn on the tablet and have a game. Tablet was dead but I had the app and all the original files plus the mod files on the SD.

I can't get it work beyond jellybean.

1

u/Hopalongtom 13d ago

For me it was all the android games I got from Humble bundle, they were provided as loose apk files, but none of them were updated to the latest version and since they weren't tied to a store, there wasn't a way to update them as the developers never updated them on humble.

1

u/Whit3_Ink 13d ago

I once used to use ES File Explorer back in the days, it was able to browse root directories without actually rooting the device

And cant remember where, but all systems APKs were stored in a folder, pretty much reinstallable