Android apk

MrBallistic
Hi, I've been enjoying Zotero on iOS, but unfortunately the beta program on the Play Store is currently full: that's when I thought of building the apk from the source code myself from here: https://github.com/zotero/zotero-android

I'm not really a developer though, so I don't really know the steps required to do so: any ideas? Should I ask in github issues?
  • abint21
    Yeah we've been waiting for a long time for this now
  • adamsmith
    Zotero has been very clear about this: the Android app is in a purposefully limited beta, and as long as it is, distribution through Google Play is the only way to keep it limited. Once it's openly released, they will publish as an APK.
  • northword
    You can get APK from https://github.com/northword/zotero-android-nightly-build , but note, as adamsmith said, the Android app is in a purposefully limited beta, APK from this repo is for trial use only.
  • MrBallistic
    I see, thanks for providing the link!
  • cheflo

    I’m also looking forward to the APKs being published now that the app is out of beta. In the meantime, it is possible to install Zotero on a phone via Google play and then use adb to extract the relevant APKs to your computer and then install them on a second device. This might not fit all workflows so an official APK would be more convenient, but this is still helpful when trying to install on a device lacking google play while avoiding getting malware from downloading an APK online.

    While there shouldn’t be anything harmful in the instructions below, following them is done on your own risk and as always it’s good to backup sensitive files first.


    1. First, install adb and connect your phone to your computer in USB debug mode. If you run adb devices from terminal, you should see your phone.

    2. Now run adb shell pm list packages | grep zotero to get the full name under which zotero is installed on your phone.

    3. Using the name returned from the previous command, you now need to find the paths of all the APKs that are part of the installation. For us, that would be adb shell pm path org.zotero.android.

    4. For each of the paths returned above, we need to extract the APK from the phone. We need to repeat the following command for each path adb pull data/app/~~YXlK69hNHzmO40QZk7e1gg==/org.zotero.android-jtfl7U98wegz2xDKfEJQYA==/base.apk. This will create one apk file per path in the current directory.

    5. Now you can disconnect your phone and connect the other device you want to install the APK on. Confirm that adb can see it with adb devices. You might need to enable “sideloading” (or similar) on your device.

    6. To install Zotero on the second device, we need to install all the extracted APK files together via adb install-multiple *.apk.

    That’s it! Zotero should now be installed on your second device.

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