Android App Files

2024-06-25

Android App Files

For an Android app "Foo", the files can be found in the following locations:

• /data/data/com.foo or another namespace like uk.co.foo - App data
• /sdcard/Android/data/com.foo - App data on external storage

List Files

On macOS, ADB is in ~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools

If you have Android Studio installed, you already have ADB. Add it and other platform tools to your PATH by adding the following line to ~/.zshrc:

export PATH=$PATH:~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools

Then, you can run shell commands on the device, like listing files:

> adb shell ls
acct
cache
config
...

To find all directories or files with "foo" in the name:

> adb shell find / -name "*foo*" 2>/dev/null

The 2>/dev/null part suppresses error messages by redirecting them to /dev/null. Otherwise you'll see a lot of "Permission denied" messages.

You might need to run adb root to get access to all files:

> adb root
restarting adbd as root
> adb shell ls
acct
...