View Android System Apps

Android system apps are those such as Settings.

Android SDK comes with a tool called aapt (Android Asset Packaging Tool). Each Android SDK comes with aapt located in its directory such as:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\build-tools\23.0.1

To view a package, one needs to pull the package from an Android device's system directory with ADB or Android Monitor's file explorer, then run a command like the following command:

   aapt l -a "E:\my_direcotry_for _pulled_android_app_packages\settings.apk" > e:\temp\output.txt

The above command will generate all the contents and put them in file output.txt that can be viewed by any text eidtor.