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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Add more languages support directly into .apk file

Oldman : "Recently my boss wanted me to add more languages support directly into my Android application .apk file without using my sourcecode. I don't know why he need that but I found the way to do this."

1.Go and install android-apktool
http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/

2.Using apktool to decode the orignal .apk file (the file must not be sign yet or it will broke and can not be install later)

# apktool if xxxx.apk
# apktool d xxxx.apk

3.then xxxx folder was created. inside them place res/values-zz/strings.xml file where zz is your addition language (ex: ja for japanese, it for italy)

4. rebuild the resource.

# apktool b ./xxxx/ xxxx-new.apk

5. then open xxxx-new.apk and xxxx.apk with zip manager program(or something like that) drag resource.arse file from xxxx-new.apk and drop into xxxx.apk 

6. sign xxxx.apk with jarsigner and your key. Then your xxxx.apk file can be install and should be supporting for new languages....
http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/app-signing.html

Note: I did this on my Debian x86 machine.