In general I noticed that larger APK files have other files in them and in the installation process the original APK gets split into a “base.apk” file, library dependencies (into a directory) and a couple of other “split files” derived from the APK.

The first method is useful for small APK files (i don’t have a specific definition of precisely what “small” means, but read on and you’ll get the idea) while the 2nd method is more appropriate for larger APKs. The next step is to remount the AVD disks with the adb remount directive (I haven’t looked into what exactly happens here, but it seems to be needed, and works)Īfter this, I noticed that there are 2 main methods, either copying the APK directly to the system partition, or installing the APK first to the user partition then “moving” it to the system partition. You need to have the /system partition writable, this is done by first starting up the emulator with the -writable-system directive I’ll go through these below while also going through the steps that I used to eventually get my APK’s installed to the /system partition. But there are a few caveats that one needs to know. So the basic idea is that we want to get the given APK onto the /system partition and according to most tutorials and explanations i’ve found online it seems to be as easy as just copying the file onto the system partition and rebooting the device.

Also uninstalling via the GUI is not available (as far as i can see) once the app is installed on the /system partition

NB: Installing to the /system partition also seems to have some extra benefits in terms of permissions, but I have not read into the details of what exactly happens. I wanted to install a couple of APKs on the /system partition so that if I clear out the apps installed in the user partition, or I format/delete the user partition, i don’t lose my stuff.

Apk android emulator