App not installed error on Android Device

Question

I am trying to "reverse engineer" an android app, whatever you want to call it. Anyways, I change the apk to a .zip then I get the classes.dex file, get the smali files, alter one smali file, then convert back to dex and put it back into the zip, then back to the apk.

Is there anything I am missing? It used to work, I have done it before, but now all of a sudden it isn't working. It just says "app not installed". Is it because of the android updates? or what...?

And why are you "reverse engineering" it? You're not trying to steal from hard-working programmers, are you? — 323go, Jun 13 '14 at 14:04
Come on, give me a break I'm not trying to steal the code or anything! What is proguard? — user2421188, Jun 13 '14 at 16:24

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 25 '16 at 11:19

Your modified app fails to install because you probably forgot to sign it. You can use testsign.jar to do that.

Answering your question about proguard: it is a tool to obfuscate java code in order to make it harder to reverse engineer the apps. Depending on your skills, you might still be able to reverse engineer obfuscate code without too much problems.

App not installed error on Android Device

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