Copy apps to PC (Wear OS)

[thumbtak]

Enable Developer Options
On your Android Wear watch you’ll need to go into Settings, System, About, find the Build Number and tap this seven times. You’ll now see a new option in the Settings menu called Developer Options.

Turn on ADB debugging over Wi-Fi
In the Developer Options menu look for and enable an option called ADB debugging, and confirm that you wish to do so when asked. Below this you should also see Debug over Wi-Fi. Enable this, give it a moment to connect, then jot down the IP address that appears below. It will look something like 192.168.0.27:5555.

Install Minimal ADB and Fastboot
sudo apt install adb -y

Connect Minimal ADB and Fastboot to Android Wear
In terminal type adb connect 192.168.0.27:5555 make sure you replace the IP and port with your smartwatches IP and port number.

Determine the package name of the app, e.g. com.example.someapp. Skip this step if you already know the package name.

adb shell pm list packages

Look through the list of package names and try to find a match between the app in question and the package name. This is usually easy, but note that the package name can be completely unrelated to the app name. If you can’t recognize the app from the list of package names, try finding the app in Google Play using a browser. The URL for an app in Google Play contains the package name.

Get the full path name of the APK file for the desired package.

adb shell pm path com.example.someapp

The output will look something like this: package:/data/app/com.example.someapp-2.apk

Pull the APK file from the Android device to the development box.

adb pull /data/app/com.example.someapp-2.apk

Wait and finish
You now need to wait one to three minutes for the file to finish being copied. It will seem like it is doing nothing, and then it will say success. Once it says “success” it is finished. You should now find an APK file in the folder you are currently in.

[Author]

Posts