yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Of course, I am an idiot...

Funny thing, the "search" and "details" API endpoints allow you to not only get information on apps, but music, books and video as well. The "purchase" endpoint requires you to specify an offertype, which is always hardcoded to 1 for apps ("PURCHASE"), but there are other types (e.g. RENTAL) that apply to media. So, natural conclusion: all digital goods on Play use the same checkout/download process, right? Err, wrong. Turns out that the "delivery" endpoint produces messages of type DeliveryResponse (obviously) and this only defines a submessage of type AndroidAppDeliveryData. Of course, I only realize that after spending days running in circles. Worst of all: I was sitting on the answer all along (but when you spent enough time with Googles giant mess, you tend to miss the forest for the trees).

Just in case anyone wonders why Raccoon updates take their time.
[Android Apps and Games] elsquare:
Oddity?

- When searching for "youtube kids" app, I can find it.

- Click on it to get the details and the download button.

- download button is greyed out for me.

- strange though: I can Shift+click the search result to start the download directly, it downloads without problems.

For the regular youtube app, both ways work, download button is active.

Never observed such with any other app.

Small request btw: if download fails (due to incompatible device), could this be shown somehow in the progress bar? I didn't find out why I had errors until I read somewhere that one has to hover the mouse over the "error" in the progress bar. Not intuitive at least not for me.

Or let a "?" Button become available / activated next to the progress bar in case of errors... anything "eye-poking" would help.

Otherwise, [MENTION=5035576]onyxbits[/MENTION], thanks a bunch for the indispensable app (which I bought some time ago!)
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
The button should only be greyed out if the app had been downloaded previously. AFAIR (can't look it up right now), the logic only checks if the file(name) exists in the repositoriy.

Downloads never fail for compatibility reasons (Play wouldn't offer an incompatible app in the first place and Raccoon doesn't care anyway). The stupid thing is: I didn't expect things to go wrong there, so if they do anyway, there's really no way to explain to the (non techy) user what went wrong and how to fix it (hence no error dialog). But yeah, from a UX point of view, a tooltip is a ****ty solution.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
I would need to see the error for answering that one. As I said: any error at that point is unexpected, otherwise there would be a userfriendly handler for it ;).
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
We have a new release.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Success!

Just got IRC Cloud "running" on my test device (well, not actually running, since it requires Google Play services, but you know what I mean). What's so special about that app? Well, it uses Google's new App Bundles delivery mechanism. Which basically means, there's a base apk containing the code plus two or more resource/config APKs containing all the device specific stuff, so you can save a bit on bandwidth and internal storage spage. Sounds like a good idea, isn't!

App Bundles shave a couple kilobytes off an app by only distributing what is actually needed. The implementation, however, is horrible (as to be expected from Google):

Code signing is now broken in every way possible, as you have to give Google your keys (hopefully this means, APK signing will be removed in the future, as it serves no purpose - if it ever did).

Even though Google says, ABB is open source and can be implemented by other app stores, it really smells like it's primary purpose is to keep the competition out.

Sideloading is now a hell of a lot more difficult
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
And we have a new release, adding support for App Bundles!
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
I just realized: App Bundles could be great be great for privacy - sadly, they aren't.

APK files can easily extracted from a phone and uploaded to piracy websites. For that reason, most paid apps perform an online license check. Needless to say that this is a giant privacy issue, as those apps fail without network connection and can't be used without the phone being tethered to Google. With app bundles, Google could deprecate the online license check by simply packaging an individual license file into each app download or by handing it in later through dynamic delivery.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
New Release! This one is kinda important.
[Android Apps and Games] titi66200:
Can't download Raccoon 4.5 (no file.)

Not Found

The requested URL "/sites/raccoon.onyxbits.de/files/raccoon-4.5.0.exe" was not found on this server.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Thanks, *FIXED*.
[Android Apps and Games] crypticc:
Trouble downloading specific app

Hi

I downloaded this app hoping to unlock ability to download a paid-for hardware specific app, mconnect Player HD. This is the tablet mode equivalent of mconnect player.

When I setup pseudo device I get to see the mconnect trial and the non-HD (phone) app, but not the tablet one.

I guess I need to create a dummy device but to be honest I don't have a clue where to start. I've read the first 20 and last 20 pages and every other page on this thread and don't see how I might approach doing that. I did setup a pixelXL but that didn't reveal any different apps to the pixel 2 and Nexus 7 v2 devices I have on my official account.

Any tips?

Here's the official link by the way if anyone wants to take a look.

Chris

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.conversdigitalhd
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Raccoon mimics a smartphone by default. If you want it to mimic a tablet, you'll have to use DummyDroid to create a GSF ID and a user agent, fitting your device.
[Android Apps and Games] crypticc:
Thank you. Yes I got the far but then all the switches to minic a tablet different to my own
[Android Apps and Games] Hikari no Tenshi:
All versions of Raccoon doesn't show app icon in "My apps" window for some apps with adaptive icon (Google Chrome, Google Translate, Google Maps, Adobe Acrobat, Firefox, Viber).
[Android Apps and Games] SpasilliumNexus:
Already answered.
[Android Apps and Games] tomatosmoothie:
Thank you for your work, the latest version works flawlessly on linux :)
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
New release; minor bugfixes
[Android Apps and Games] elsquare:
Hi Onyxbits,

two problems:

1) Raccoon says that the selected user / Profile is not logged in and that I should tun setup Wizard again. I had my profile nicely set up to mimic my Galaxy S4. Only way to fix the situation was to let setup create a new fake device - which then is not an S4... What to do to make my existing profiles work again?

2) Raccoon won't find particular apps.

One example is "orangegas" (nl.orangegas.app.orangegas),

the other is Signal (aka securesms).

Any ideas?
[Android Apps and Games] knpk13:
I was just wondering why Raccoon is only a desktop client. Wouldn't it be easier to also be able to install it as an apk on an Android phone as an alternative to the play store? Instead of transferring apks from a desktop client? I couldn't find an answer to that in the OP or via searching.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Quite a number of reasons for that. Most are historic, though, so there might be a Raccoon app in the future:

The protocol buffer definitions were lumped into one giant file. Eclipse/ADT weren't coping well, making App development a chore.

Back then, there were more choices to get apps outside of Play (e.g. Humble Bundle) and I found it a bit annoying to have them lying in my ~/Download folder.

I really like to inspect apps before I install them. You wouldn't believe the outrageous spam emails I get to my Play Developer address from shady companies wanting me to integrate their SDKs in my apps (best so far was one that offering me payment to turn my user's phones into VPN exit nodes).

I just to have really crappy internet, so redownloading apps after flashing a custom ROM was taking too long.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
By the way, I'm currently overhauling the Raccoon website. Any feedback will be appreciated :).
[Android Apps and Games] vietnux:
file extends is exe? not java
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
It's Java wrapped by launch4j (because Windows often has a messed up binding for JAR, treating it as ZIP).
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
We got a new release. This is mainly a maintainance release.
[Android Apps and Games] maruashok:
is there any command line to import app(s)

i am using windows and did't find any help like which parameter does what ?
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
No, thats GUI only for now
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
For software support, please open a ticket from the Help|Support menu
[Android Apps and Games] filtragem:
Hello,

For some reason the new version is downloading more than one apk, don't know if is the new version or some change from google play or the developers.

Revolut, for example, is creating com.revolut.revolut-600901251.apk, config.xhdpi-600901251.apk, config.en-600901251.apk and config.armeabi_v7a-600901251.apk

N26 is creating de.number26.android-201938000.apk and config.armeabi_v7a-201938000.apk

The main apks are smaller than the previous versions of those apps that I previous downloaded.

These apps can't run when installing only the main apk.

It's a miss configuration from my part?

Or how can I have only a single full apk?

Thank you in advance
[Android Apps and Games] Hikari no Tenshi:
This is made by apps developers to minimize apk downloadable size.

Main apk contains only common stuff.

Other apk's will be downloaded depending on your system configuration (language, screen resolution etc)
[Android Apps and Games] SpasilliumNexus:
Split APKs, aka "App Bundles" has been a thing for a few months, and started with Google apps such as Chrome, Maps, and Home.

Copy the split APKs to the device and use Split APK Installer to install them.
[Android Apps and Games] filtragem:
Thank you very much SpasilliumNexus
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
new release
[Android Apps and Games] AnonVendetta:
Got a slight issue:

I logged into my real Google account with Raccoon, let it choose a random device (not sure what), then downloaded 5 apps. 4 out of these 5 apps have obbs. I copied those to my SD card via USB cable, those install fine on my Android (they are Linux apps from Corbin Champion).

Then I proceeded to download 3 games I have bought in the past (Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, GTA Vice City, and GTA3. All of these have obbs. The DL completed fine, copied them to SD....and my Note 4 doesnt recognize them as valid APKs. I can open them as a zip archive and the contents look fine. There is an armeabi-v7a directory in the lib directory, which matches my phone's CPU architecture. And using Yalp Store on my phone shows these apps to be compatible and downloadable. I did also check the SHA-1 checksums of each and everything matched up, so it is not a case of file corruption during transfer.

None of the above apps have a license check, they run just fine without Play Store, and I don't wish to install it on my device.

What gives here?

Edit: Figured it out, but still cant use what I've paid for. I decompiled the APK and saw that it requires a minumum SDK of 24, whereas my MM ROM is 23. So it's no fault of Raccoon. When I bought these games a few years ago, I was running KitKat, and of course Nougat didnt exist.

I'm thinking I might get them to work by decompiling the APKs and changing the min SDK from 24 to 23. Or leaving the min SDK value as is and using Xposed module InstallerOpt to byypass Android's SDK checks, it has worked for some apps before. Failing that, I will try to get Raccoon to download the next oldest version. Can you give a short how to on how to do this (if possible)?
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Never try to modify the APK. It won't work. You don't have the correct signing key and the app probably asks for SDK 24 for a reason and will crash on earlier devices. You have to download a version, matching your device (you'll need to open a support ticket from the help menu, if you want me to walk you through that).
[Android Apps and Games] AnonVendetta:
[MENTION=5035576]onyxbits[/MENTION]: Never say never, modifying the min SDK actually did work for one of these games (GTA Vice City). I simply decompiled with APKTool, changed min SDK from 24 to 23, recompiled, signed with my private key. After that it installs/runs fine, no crashes, even works with my Bluetooth controller.

Unfortunately the same change didnt work for the other 2 games, they install but crash immediately. I had to "downgrade" these games to the previous version via "unofficial" methods. I dont feel guilty about it since I already bought them years ago.

I honestly dont give a crap about breaking the dev's signature, fact of the matter is they they intentionally released an update which made the current version incompatible for me. I only care about being able to use what I paid for.

It's nice to have confirmation that Raccoon can fetch a lower version. However, since other apps like Yalp/Aurora store already do most of what Raccoon does, and without a PC, then i dont see a need to pay. Can you point out some features that would justify paying (besides support)? I am also opposed to a subscription model, I prefer the one time payment approach. Maybe if you would making a native Android version of Raccoon then I would def hop on board.
[Android Apps and Games] RacconLover:
Hello, seems Google has added new authentication checks mechanisms. In other words, when I try to logg in to Raccoon with a new account I received "CaptchaRequired" error message.

I am not sure if you can solve this kind o problem ... because is difficult to by-pass captchas (usually is done via ML). Can you give me some feedback, what are you planning to do to solve this problem ?, or are you planning to leave this project ?

Catch you later.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
I'm quite determined to add Captcha support to Raccoon. In fact, I have already rewritten large portions of the Setup Wizard from scratch (it's quite a complex piece of code already, additional captcha state and image download doesn't make it any simpler), including the nescessary protocol changes. But it seems as if Google has some extra "this is not a Droid" detection hidden somewhere.

I put a progess report with screenshots on my blog. Help that would be appreciated:

Ideas for the blue decoration panel (Something needs to be there to bring the dialog together)

Message Phrasing

General layout

Any idea on the device selector. I definitely don't want a full device editor in the setup wizard, so some userfriendly way to choose between build-in and external JSON files would be nice.
[Android Apps and Games] RacconLover:
Hello, because I am not so familiar with Java (so I can't help you directly) I try to solve the auth problem looking to other "Apk Downloaders" from the internet.

One of the tools I had used is an API Wrapper over GooglePlay Store called GooglePlayAPI (search for googleplay-api on GitHub).

What I want to show you is the authentication process used in this script to retrieve the "gsfid" and "authSubToken".

The request look like the following:

Url: the same as you use (this forum doesn't allow me to post urls)

Params:

{'Email': '<.. [MENTION=5499064]gmail.com[/MENTION]>', 'EncryptedPasswd': '<encrypted password using Google Public Key>', 'add_account': '1', 'accountType': 'HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE', 'google_play_services_version': '11951438', 'has_permission': '1', 'source': 'android', 'device_country': 'de', 'lang': 'de_DE', 'sdk_version': '25', 'client_sig': '38918a453d07199354f8b19af05ec6562ced5788', 'callerSig': '38918a453d07199354f8b19af05ec6562ced5788', 'service': 'ac2dm', 'callerPkg': 'com.google.android.gms'}​

Headers:

{'User-Agent': 'GoogleAuth/1.4 (A0001 NJH47F)', 'app': 'com.google.android.gsm'}​

Response:

HTTP Status:403 Reason:Error=NeedsBrowser ErrorDetail=To access your account, you must sign in on the web. Touch Next to start browser sign-in.​

I am not sure if you receive the same error... or if you perform the same request to authenticate the device to Google Play.

What is clear is that something has changed in this request header/ parameters.

I was trying to capture the traffic made by the Play Store APK in order to look at the requests; but unfortunately the traffic it is encrypted and I didn't find an alternative to decrypt it.

Could you tell me how your request look (url, header, params) and what is the server response ? Did you manage to log in ?

I Know your source code is public but as I said, is difficult to me to compile and run it in a debugger.

Thank you a lot.

Regards.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Sounds like this one: https://github.com/Akdeniz/google-p.../akdeniz/googleplaycrawler/GooglePlayAPI.java

That's the one, Raccoon is originally based on. Don't waste your time with it, it is entirely defunct by now (and has been for at least a year).

GsfId is a different step, unrelated to the CAPTCHA problem.

Some of those formfields are not needed. They belong to the OAUTH2 flow. The code, you are citing has been in circulation for a while and people have been adding to it what they thought was nescessary like in a game of chinese whispers.

Yeah, that's one way to do it. But that agent tells Play that you are using a more recent GSM version. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

This one is interesting. I never managed to trigger that error.

Not nescessarily. It might also be something about the account, the IP address or something that is communicated on a sidechannel that triggers Google. I always get "Captcha required". I think, your error is probably worse.

curl -D - -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" -H "User-Agent: GoogleLoginService/1.3 (grouper JDQ39)" "https://android.clients.google.com/auth" --data-ascii "accountType=HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE&has_permission=1&add_account=1&service=ac2dm&source=android&sdk_version=23&Email=YOUR_EMAIL_HERE&EncryptedPasswd=YOUR_ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD_HERE&device_country=en&operatorCountry=en&lang=en"
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Just pulled the code for generating encrypted passwords from the Raccoon into a standalone tool. You can find it on my blog
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Some more technical information on the google login process.
[Android Apps and Games] RacconLover:
Hello,

Thank you for the information and sorry for the late response.

In the meantime I made some researches. I manage to proxy the traffic sent by Play Store to Google and and also to decrypt it.

For what I saw, there are a lot of informations sent by the client in order to authenticate the device, so I am not sure this is a good direction to go.

Some interesting field sent by the client are: a device token (which is built using the mobile device characteristics) and also some auth tokens.

If you want I can share with you the requests made by Play Store; maybe are useful for you. For that, please give me an email address or a url where to upload the files.

I will keep you updated.

Catch you later.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Hi,

just send it to androidATonyxbits.de
[Android Apps and Games] navigation21:
Can you fix the typo on this page?

https://blog.onyxbits.de/android-permissions-explained-com-android-vending-check_license-210/

(I'm not allowed to post links)
[Android Apps and Games] awesomio:
very comfortable thanks
[Android Apps and Games] BreckZeBoulay:
[MENTION=5035576]onyxbits[/MENTION]

I'm not sure to well understand the news in your blog saying that you passed (or find a solution ?) the captcha verification.

V4.11 is working or not ? For me it's not working (linux version).
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
I'm still busy porting from Android to PC.
[Android Apps and Games] titi66200:
[MENTION=5035576]onyxbits[/MENTION]

Raccoon 4.11 no longer works, can't download new versions of apps. Message "wait and error."

Edit.

Works with free apps but not with apps I bought.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
New release (obviously mandatory)
[Android Apps and Games] knpk13:
Might want to update the thread title as well, its stuck at 4.7 for me
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
The forum doesn't allow me to change the title anymore :-/
[Android Apps and Games] mattgyver:
Thread title updated to 4.12. I'm not sure if it's a glitch, but I know that as of late, devs have reported their threads when they need titles updated. Alternatively, PM me when you want it changed :good:
[Android Apps and Games] :
Racoon compared to Aurora Store ( an Android app) : what are the advantages?
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
You get to keep a backup of your apps on your PC. This is important because (I get those mails regularly - just yesterday from a particularly shady company).

Easy access to the APK files in case you want to inspect/mod them.

Ability to download different variants/versions of an app or get APKs that officially don't support your device.

Support (real support, not "welcome to the bugtracker")

A dev who actually knows a thing or two about the network protocol and can fix stuff on his own when Google breaks it (again).

No misleading claims of supporting anonymous logins (besides this being a legal problem, using a public account doesn't actually make you anonymous - something a dev should know).

No sketchy feeling that something is still tracking you, even if the app is not running in the foreground (can't put my finger on anything specific there, don't care either, but after seeing Aurora's solution to the login captcha problem, I lost all faith. With Raccoon you know that shutting the application down, terminates all ties with Google).
[Android Apps and Games] m0d:
I have been using pc less and less.

But, it will be great to have the ability to backup and restore apps (apks) + data (app data)

Any ideas if soon to be possible
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
I was actually working on that... then this whole CAPTCHA cluster**** happened, putting everything else on hold. Plus: in the meantime, Google had some annyoing little ideas on tweaking the APK format that will kill websites such as apkmirror.com in the long run. Without getting into technical details, it comes down to rethinking how to store APK downloads. Once we have that, we can talk backup and restore.
[Android Apps and Games] Supremecou:
Hello onyxbits,

i wanted to download an Game from the Playstore, but i only get a couple apks and none of it i can be installed. Is there a way to merge them ? Or a way to repack xapks into an normal apk ?
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
That's an app bundle. You'll have to install it via USB cable from the App Manager ("Install" button in the Actions menu).
[Android Apps and Games] Supremecou:
I would like to use them on Bluestacks Emulator and install them like old apks (just drag and drop) but that is not working with xapk or the apks i download with your tool
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
This sounds like a Help|Support thing.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
I should probably mention, that I'm currently working on a new version of Dummydroid (anouncement; details). Here's a screenshot:

You'll need it to bypass geo restrictions and to download incompatible apps.

Let me know what you think of the new user interface. It's a style, I want to eventually have in Raccoon as well.
[Android Apps and Games] onyxbits:
Ok, now I'm a bit at a loss. I think, I misdesigned the whole proxy selection thing. Let's recap. There are three reasons for why you'd want to use a proxy:

For privacy reasons (to hide your IP addess from big G)

To get around country restrictions when downloading geo blocked apps.

You don't have direct internet connection.

Clearly, proxy selection can be a security issue. That menas, you probably want to configure a proxy pool and safely select the one to use via a drop box (or similar). However, for Dummydroid this is not so practical (see screenshot above). So, let's say, Dummydroid and Raccoon will merge, how should proxy selection work?