If you follow our site regularly or other technology sites, dealing with the Android OS subject, you could often read the “download apk” words. This indicates about the presence of useful links for downloading and installing the packages called APK, which is dedicated about Android applications, like we have for Windows executable (.exe) or for MacOS (.app).
An Android application is stored in a file named by the Application Name .apk. The apk file must be installed in your Android Device in order to run it.
The Google Play Store obviously contains applications and games in APK format, but there are a few developers who prefer not to publish their applications on the store, making them available from their official sites or forums such as XDA Developer Forum directly in the form of an APK.
How To Manually Install An APK File
To perform the manual installation of an .apk file, you need to follow a brief procedure, detailed below:
- You must go to the Settings option of your Android based device and look under Security, (it is sometimes found in combination with Lock screen), search for the Unknown Sources, and once activated, it allows you the installation of applications from sources other than the Google Play Store. After activating the Unknown Sources installation you will see displayed awarning message about the device being vulnerable to attack. If you trust the APK file you are about to download,
Select OK, to continue.(It is recommendable to change this setting back, after the current installation of an apk is complete).
- Once you enabled this settings you are ready to manually install an .apk file.
- Open the browser on your Android device and search for the web page where the application’s APK, that you want to install, has been made available for download.
- After download, to install the apk, you should first locate the apk files on your device. You can do this by serving a file manager, an application that allows you to explore the contents of your folders. If you don’t have a file manager on your Android device you can always retrieve one from the Google Play Store. Usually,an APK downloaded directly from smartphones ends up in the Downloads folder.
If your device is running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow or higher, you press on the APK, in addition to displaying the appropriate button to continue with the installation; you can also check the permissions that will require the application to run properly.
Please note that downloading APK files from “Unknown Sources “can be dangerous for your Android device. Applications and games available in the form of APK, downloaded from unknown sites, might actually hide malicious code, such as malware, able to take remote control of your device and install further malicious code. Therefore, we recommend you to install APKs only if you are sure of the origin of the file.
On our site we give links to download the apks safely with the latest versions of these applications.If you wish to be more sure, you could always (if you don’t have one already)install an antivirus on your Android device, such as the one proposed by Kaspersky .
