Android Studio and/or adb advice

Watch Face Studio
1

Hi gang,

I am looking to reverse engineer a watch face that I have installed and running on my watch with either the Android Studio or adb. Specifically I am trying to update/replace some of the images, however I am having trouble locating the images within the APK, they look lied up in the XMLs and I can’t seem to untangle it all.

Is there a location on the watch (GC6) where the current watch face hosts/stores its images and code that I can pull for inspection?

Any other advice would be great too!

Thanks.

2

Hi, try rename the apk into a zip file. Extract a copy to your pc. There should be a res folder where all the png are store in one of its sub folders

Just showing u where to find. But to do the actual replacement i not sure how.

But you should ask the developer permission to do that tbh if the resulting watch face is for commercial use

3

Thanks @Knightwing I have done this however the res/drawable folders only contain xml files so not sure how to translate the xml or ref within it to an actual image file. from what I can see the images themselves aren’t in the package…

This is for personal use only too :slight_smile:

4

Hi, dont know what apk (complier used to complied it) u are viewing

As wfs complied apks does have .png files

Ensure u search all sub folders not just res/drawable.

E.g res/drawable-*

Look through all the drawable folders

But if the images are complied into a binary file within the package then u are out of luck.

5

Yeah I have been through all of those folders and can only seem to find xml files.

I have turned my watch on to airplane mode and re-opened the watch face and it loads, so somewhere on the watch the images that it is made up from must be on the device not drawing down from the web.

Is there an APK or location on the watch where the code/assets of the watch face currently used is hosted/placed as they must be somewhere for the watch to load without an internet connection…

6

Does the xml show “http://…” anywhere ?
If yes then maybe u are right. Else it could be complied into a binary or something

Or its package with refs to folders within the watch.
Which i am unable to help

P.s some drawable may not be images (png) but drawn into the watch… e.g shapes etc

7

Watch Faces published on Play Store use .aab bundled files. it is more difficult to modify .aab than an APK they are compressed.

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

8

Thanks for the reply Ron, does the team know where watch faces avaiable for selection when pressing and holding store thier files on the watch? Assuming it must be outsode the app apk files as mentioned above they can be selected and switched between in airplane mode so they must exist within the watch not pull from the internet…

9

I have no clue where they are stored I do not know the adb commands those check github for them

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations