HOW TO EXTRACT FILES FROM ANDROID APP
How to Retrieve Video File from an Android App on Mac
TIPS & TRICKS
Downloaded a video on your favorite Android App but wishes to share it with your friends? The method that I am going to show you may not work on all apps as I have only tried on a few. Due to privacy concerns, I will not be naming any apps here that this method can work. I will be going through the steps :)
Step 1: Download Android File Transfer
Android File Transfer (ATF) allows you to browse and transfer files between your Mac and Android devices.
Step 2: Enable File Transfer on your Android device
- Unlock your Android device.
- With a USB/USB-C cable, connect your device to your computer.
- On your device, tap the “Charging this device via USB” notification.
- Under “Use USB for,” select File Transfer.
- An Android File Transfer window will open on your computer.
Use it to drag files. (if it didn't launch, manually launch ATF)
Step 3: Navigate to the app of your choice
Look for a folder call Android , open its subfolders and look for another folder called data .
You should see a list of folders tagged with package names (i.e. com.android.chrome). This is where you find the offline files. Go to the app of your choice.
A lot of apps generated unique code to name their folders and files, so you may not be able to find the media file you want. One trick I did is to look for the file with the largest file size.
In my example, I found a file with 300 over MB. This got to be the video file! However, the OS prevents you from just dragging this to your system (if you can do so please tell me how!).
Step 4: Download Android File Manager/Explorer
Download a File Explorer app (feel free to explorer other file manager apps) from the Playstore call Explorer File Manager to extract the file from your Android Device.
Step 5: Transfer File from Android Device to PC
Open the app, grant permissions and navigate to the file you wanted. Select the file and tap on “Copy to PC”. This will generate a static website URL (i.e. http://172.12.12.12:8080) to download the file. I encourage you to try to select multiple files to generate a zip file.
Step 6: Rename and Read the File
Once you downloaded the file, if it is a zip file, the name is “ExplorerDownload.zip”. You may not see the hidden files due to unknown format. Enable the ability to see hidden files by doing these:
- In Finder, open up your Macintosh HD folder
- Press Command+Shift+Dot
- Your hidden files will become visible. Repeat step 2 to hide them again!
For me, I guessed that my file format should be a video file format, so I renamed it to .mov and ~Tadaa, a thumbnail is generated.
I can now use it as a normal video file.
Comments
This is a very simple trick I found out when I needed to show a show glimpse of this video to someone else. I encourage you to not use it for commercial use, but only if you have paid and you own the video for the period, and you needed another platform to display the video.
Thanks for reading!
