Where is the deployed apk file? how to uninstall it with adb?

Question

I have tried to install my apk using adb like this:

D:\C_Desktop\Development\Android SDK\platform-tools>adb install "C:\test_haxe\bin\android\bin\bin\testhaxe-debug.apk"
4274 KB/s (3702929 bytes in 0.846s)
        pkg: /data/local/tmp/testhaxe-debug.apk
Success

so, its installed fine, but at my phone, I couldn't find the apk file, is it deleted after being installed?!

also, I tried to uninstall it like this:

adb uninstall com.ketab.haxe

but I get

Failure

Because I have no emulator, I will have to install the app each time to see the progress, so I will need to uninstall it and then install the new app on my phone, is this the right way to go any way?

Answer 1

to find out the apk file location after installation use pm path <package> command:

adb shell pm path com.ketab.haxe

you could try uninstalling the package with:

adb shell pm uninstall com.ketab.haxe

in case of failure check the error message with:

adb logcat -d -s PackageManager:*

Answer 2

Linux/mac users can also create a script to uninstall ("delete") an apk with something like the following. Create a file named adb-uninstall with these 3 lines:

pkg=$(aapt dump badging $1|awk -F" " '/package/ {print $2}'|awk -F"'" '/name=/ {print $2}')
adb uninstall $pkg

Then chmod +x adb-uninstall to make it executable.

now you can simply:

adb-uninstall myapp.apk

The benefit here is that you don't need to know the package name. Similarly, you can create adb-run myapp.apk.

Note: This requires that you have aapt in your path. You can find it under the new build tools folder in the SDK.

Answer 3

[with solution] I couln't find the apk file on my android device after installing successfuly from the command line my app apk (adb install ~/Downloads/myapp.apk) . After searching my phone's File Manager, I found out the app was downloaded as an APP and not as an apk file, as I had expected. So if anyone else was looking for the apk file - it's an application and not a file you can see