BashAPK

This repository contains various Bash scripts that simplify editing of decompiled Android applications. The main goal is make easier to create “light” version of applications. Supported tools are Apktool and MT Manager.

rmdupes

Removes duplicate files from specified directories. For example, if you have following resource folders:

drawable-hdpi
drawable-xhdpi
drawable-xxhdpi

and your screen has the XHDPI density, then following command:

rmdupes drawable-xhdpi drawable-xxhdpi drawable-hdpi

will delete all found duplicate graphics, starting from the second folder. You can also pass a directory of the decompiled by MT Manager resources.arsc file (--arsc option) to delete corresponding paths from XML files.

How to prioritize directories sequence of resources you can read here.

rmdupes-arsc

Removes duplicate resources from specified XML files. For instance, if you have following XML files, that decompiled by MT Manager:

style.xml
style-v21.xml
style-v28.xml

and your Android version is 5.1 (API 22), then to delete unnecessary duplicate resources you should use the following command:

rmdupes-arsc style-v21.xml style.xml style-v28.xml

The same logic, but for the Apktool's files hierarchy:

rmdupes-arsc values-v21/styles.xml values/styles.xml values-v28/styles.xml

imgoptim

Optimizes all specified PNG, JPEG and WebP images (using optipng, jpegoptim and cwebp), or images from specified directories recursively. It uses lossless optimization options (with maximum compression parameters) and calculates total freed space. You can disable calculations to speed up optimization process. Example of use:

imgoptim --list ../optimized-files.list assets/image.webp res/

patchapk

With this script you can apply some of the following patches (in the square brackets noted which directories and files a patch requires):

• no-ads [smali*/, res/layout*/]. Disable ads. Original implementation by Maximoff here.
• no-analytics [smali*/, AndroidManifest.xml]. Disable analytic reports.
• no-billing [smali*/, AndroidManifest.xml]. Disable the billing service to reduce RAM usage by an application.
• rm-debug-info [smali*/]. Remove debug information from Smali code to reduce size of compiled DEX file.

For Apktool only:

• rm-langs [res/values-*/]. Remove unused languages. You can change pattern of the language code that will be kept by editing the KEEP_LANG variable inside the patch script. By default it's en.
• rm-dummies [res/values*/]. Remove unnecessary “dummy” items (generated by Apktool) from application resources.

All XML files must be decompiled. When working with files that decompiled by MT Manager, it's will be better to pass the --use-xmlstarlet option to improve matching of XML elements.