There’s any number of reasons you may wish to download an APK rather than use the Play Store to install it direct on one of your devices; Anything from sideloading onto a device that’s not officially supported, to bandwidth saving or perhaps rolling back to an older version of an app and Raccoon APK downloader can solve your issues.
I had a use case to check this out personally when I got asked if NBA Jam works on the Nexus Player with the controller, but unfortunately NBA Jam isn’t supported on the Nexus Player (at least not officially anyway).
Their webpage describes Raccoon as
- A Google Play desktop client that runs on Linux, MacOS X and MS Windows systems.
- Faster and easier to navigate than the official smartphone / tablet app.
- The only APK downloader that is able to fetch paid apps as well (including their asset files).
- A superior and more reliable solution when compared to web based alternatives.
It’s time to note that just because the features list says you can grab paid apps, doesn’t mean it’s time to pirate. No sir. You’ll need to add your Google Play credentials including your gmail account, password and Google Service Framework ID.
There’s two ways to grab your Googel Service Framework ID :
The manual way :
- Open dial pad, call “*#*#8255#*#*” (without the quotation marks) This should open ‘GTalk Service Monitor’.
- Look for a line which has JID and Device ID (your email is your JID and your device ID is a string of characters with “android-” prefixed (eg: android-1234567890abcdef) your Device ID is the string minus the “android-”
Automatic way:
Install the Device ID App from Google Play :
[pb-app-box pname=’com.evozi.deviceid’ name=’Android Device ID’ theme=’discover’ lang=’en’]
It didn’t take long to download Raccoon, grab the APK to my Macbook then sideload to my Nexus Player. The process to install is very simple, download and execute. The process to download an APK to your machine really couldn’t be simpler; search and hit download.
The way Raccoon works is by identifying itself as a “device” to your Play Store account which allows it to connect to the Play Store, Search for apps & download the APKs to your desktop or laptop and use them as you please from there.
It’s an easy way to grab APKs without the need to root your device. You can grab a copy of Raccoon from their download page and try it out for yourself.
Let us know when you could have, or have used Raccoon APK downloader
