All my apps are installed in app-asec - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

hi,
i'm new on jelly bean (upgraded from ice cream sandwitch this night), and i have a little problem.
when i buy a app, i make a backup copy (manually) in order to not have to remember my installed apps
when i wipe.
but since JB, all my new apps are installed in /data/app-asec and the format is .asec
a possibility to convert into .apk or is possible to backup the .asec and reinstall from the .asec file?
thank's

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bartito said:
hi,
i'm new on jelly bean (upgraded from ice cream sandwitch this night), and i have a little problem.
when i buy a app, i make a backup copy (manually) in order to not have to remember my installed apps
when i wipe.
but since JB, all my new apps are installed in /data/app-asec and the format is .asec
a possibility to convert into .apk or is possible to backup the .asec and reinstall from the .asec file?
thank's
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am also having the same problem as yours. I usually manually pull .apk from data/app and keep it safely in PC. But now, every purchased app is sitting in data/app-asec with .asec extension encrpyted package, except a free app is still lying peacefully in data/app. This structure changed because of JB update ( every app is only in data/app for ICS ). Only method I came up with is using Ti-Backup and copy .apk out from backup folder.
However, I am still appreciated with any other solution to due with this encrypted install package. ( Since I prefer to pull .apk file manaully as usual ) :good:

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Sounds like you are purchasing apps then making a copy in order to refund the app while keeping a copy. This is frowned upon here on XDA and is considered warez. Your thread will be reported to a moderator now.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

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Mattix724 said:
Sounds like you are purchasing apps then making a copy in order to refund the app while keeping a copy. This is frowned upon here on XDA and is considered warez. Your thread will be reported to a moderator now.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NO!
I'm developer, and I buy all my apps!
I save a backup of all my apps in order to don't have to re-download every time I make a wipe.
No more than do!

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Mattix724 said:
Sounds like you are purchasing apps then making a copy in order to refund the app while keeping a copy. This is frowned upon here on XDA and is considered warez. Your thread will be reported to a moderator now.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it's not warez so back. They ud nothing wrong with backing up their apks. No one even mentioned warez so stop jumping into conclusions. Report the thread, its not gonna get any ware.
On topic: actually never thought of that idea to back up. Thanks op but I can see why Google is doing this, I think they changed it because of people who upload their apks online. It is a sheve how some people have to ruin it for others
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

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We'll leave it up to the moderator to decide whether this thread should stay open. You personally might not be doing this to get free apps but other members might see this as another way to get around this in order to obtain free apps.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

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Mattix724 said:
We'll leave it up to the moderator to decide whether this thread should stay open. You personally might not be doing this to get free apps but other members might see this as another way to get around this in order to obtain free apps.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree with you. Like I said Google made a good decision doing this. But the op didn't intend it for that reason.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

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Mattix724 said:
Sounds like you are purchasing apps then making a copy in order to refund the app while keeping a copy. This is frowned upon here on XDA and is considered warez. Your thread will be reported to a moderator now.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it is not what you are thinking. He just intended to keep backup and restore them back in case apps are not working properly. For me, I have own 5-6 Android devices and I don't want to log in Google account in every device to download apps. So I just use only one device to download them and share to the rest of mine.
By the way, I'm also a dev. and I will not do something like that surely! I know how much pain is in developing one app.
On topic : .asec is needed to be decrypted back to .apk. Someone knows how ?

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GoLfWRC said:
No, it is not what you are thinking. He just intended to keep backup and restore them back in case apps are not working properly. For me, I have own 5-6 Android devices and I don't want to log in Google account in every device to download apps. So I just use only one device to download them and share to the rest of mine.
By the way, I'm also a dev. and I will not do something like that surely! I know how much pain is in developing one app.
On topic : .asec is needed to be decrypted back to .apk. Someone knows how ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm wondering the same thing. I want to decompile some paid apps to support the multi windows feature on the note 2.

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Now, I have found those paid apps hidden in mnt/asec. Not sure about if it is encrypted with a device keycode but you may give it a try though. Hope this help.

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Mattix724 said:
We'll leave it up to the moderator to decide whether this thread should stay open. You personally might not be doing this to get free apps but other members might see this as another way to get around this in order to obtain free apps.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And how so, pray tell ?
I'm also in the same predicament as the OP, and i consider Google's move in JB as a blatant denial of EU (and especially french) law, which clearly states that every individual who legally purchases an app (or any other cultural "product", insofar as they can be called this way) has a (almost) god-given RIGHT to make a backup copy for safekeeping.. And it is especially infuriating considering that google wouldn't even fix their stupid "play store" app so it'd display the list of all purchased apps (as it used to do in the pre-ICS market app), making any new ROM-install a living nightmare when it comes to remembering all the apps you ****ing PAID FOR in the first place !!!
And why would you people report someone who asks such a question, automatically condemning him on no tangible grounds, making yourself the judge, jury and executioner in the process ??? it is especially stupid from you, considering that using this way to get free apps is a no-go, since the play store automatically recognizes if you purchased an app and if you didn't, it denies you any updates to the said app... You'd have to be a ****ing retard to opt for such an option, and I trust that (most) XDA members are way smarter than this (with the exception of the despicable people who rat out others on no justifiable grounds, that is)...
Are you an app-developer, or someone who actually has an interest to defend in this deal ? Your "senior member' status tells me you ain't, and my personal intuition tells me that you're no more than a lambda user who (unlike me) has probably never written down a single line of code in his whole life, nothing more than an (almost) "lamer", as we used to call them in the good old Amiga/AtariST days when I first learned programming in 68K assembler... Nothing wrong with that, except that it makes your opinion on this whole issue void of any credit, much less attention...
"Word to the wise" (and actually the easiest, most surefire way of living a long, healthy and troublefree life) : unless you have some personal interest to defend in the process, mind your own f-ing business, you nosy basterds !!
Ratting out on others is bad practice, and an recipe for trouble... Had you done this to me IRL, it would have guaranteed you a whacking 500g of very bony meat directly from my right arm right across your ugly mug.. And you even might have considered yourself as lucky at that, because I know a few very unfriendly people who for much less than this would actually have gone so far as to 'suicide' you with 2 or 3 bullets to the head, and your sorry remains would only have been discovered 30 or 40 years from now, in the cement foundations of a building undergoing demolition...
</flame off>
(My apologies to any people who might have felt offended by my words, but I can't help it, I ****ing hate delators... They're the first step to most of the horrors that my (and many other european) country has had to live in its darkest hours, sometime during the mid-20th century -during WW2, for the most ill-understanding of whoever might be reading this... Those scars never heal, they can only fade out very slowly. :s)

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Many thanks to GoLfWRC a couple apps that I have updatedand for some reason wouldn't update on my ouya. Thanks again

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Hi
i love xda

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Query
So finally there is no solution??
what if i just want to restore my own app stored in asec folder after a ROM upgrade?
i put the files in .android_secure folder but it does nothing
Any help will be appreciated !!
Thanks

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Interesting topic.
As I release a mod of a MIUI ROM weekly I asked myself some of the questions mentioned here.
MIUI system backup tool that comes with the ROM is of course not able to backup the ASEC folder stuff.
So users can backup the entire system (all settings, theme stuff, apps, contacts etc.) but not the encrypted paid apps.
Annoying thing. I wonder if it would be illegal to build a workaround, and if it is implementable somehow.

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.asec files are actually little images mounted in /mnt/asec/. You can find a folder for each app there. And the pkg.apk in that folder is what you need. Other things in that folder are extracted from the apk.