How to get list of downloaded apps (paid/free) by a user from Google Play?

Asked 5/9, 2017 at 8:17 Answered 28/12, 2018 at 9:0

android google-play google-oauth google-signin

120

I recently came across this app Purchase Apps, which is somehow able to retrieve apps I've paid for in google play after I signed in using my google account.

I'm trying to find out how it is being done as I want to build a similar app, but for the free apps which were downloaded.

However, I can't find which OAuth API Scope was used for retrieving that information, even after going through the entire list of APIs.

EDIT: I'm putting a new bounty on this question, as suggested by a similar question I've asked about here, and because here and there I don't see a real answer about how to do it, and what can be done with it.

I'd like to refine the questions into multiple pieces:

What is the API that can be used to get information of purchased apps? Where can I read about it? Please show a full, working example of how to do it.
Can it do more ? Maybe perform search? Maybe show free apps that were installed? Maybe the time they were installed and uninstalled? And the categories of those apps?
Are there any special requirements for using this API ?

EDIT: I'm putting a max bounty on this, because no matter how much I've read and tried, I still failed to make a POC that can query the apps from the Play Store that the user has ever downloaded (name, package name, date installed and/or removed, icon URL, price...), including both paid and free apps.

If anyone finds a working sample, show how it's done, and also show how you've found about it (documentation or anything that has led you to the solution). I can't find it anywhere, and the current solutions here are too vague for me to start from.

Canberra answered 5/9, 2017 at 8:17 Comment(9)

Try this repository github.com/googlesamples/android-play-publisher-api/tree/master/… – Swamy 15/10, 2018 at 20:46

I would look at the sample app launcher. It knows what apps are downloaded on the phone. – Pereyra 21/11, 2018 at 17:47

@android developer: I've analyzed Purchase Apps apk file by decompilation. It never used any api to get list of purchased apps. Its approach is same as we know which is parsing html content of play store web page. Here is a fragment of this code: hastebin.com/uceyavurij.js – Vespid 9/12, 2018 at 13:9

@Vespid So how does it get it for the user? After all, it needs to get data of the user's Google account... It's not enough to just access the Play Store apps... What does it do with the permissions given to it? – Cacography 9/12, 2018 at 15:49

@androiddeveloper: All of information that is provided by Purchased Apps could be retrieved from playstore web content. Unfortunately I have not access to buy an app from google play. If you share me an account which has a purchased app, I can develop a sample code for you. – Vespid 9/12, 2018 at 18:30

@Vespid It shows not just purchased apps. It shows all apps that the user has ever installed. But you didn't explain how it works. Why does it show the real dialog of Google to login? What does it do with it? And how does it even show it, with the permissions it shows? – Cacography 9/12, 2018 at 20:37

@androiddeveloper: Showing google play authentication dialog is not a big deal, it is shown by google play services to retrieve the access token. However, if you take a look at bottom of https://play.google.com/store/account?purchaseFilter=apps you see a list of purchased apps under Order history topic. By parsing this this page and going deeper in each app link, it is feasible to get all data that you needed. In addition https://github.com/yeriomin/play-store-api is a java library which contains useful source code to use in this issue. – Vespid 10/12, 2018 at 6:10

@Vespid I believe you are correct. I tested this app again, and noticed it shows only purchased apps. But I was hoping for a list of all apps. Can you please show a working sample of getting the list (what you've found), or at least the raw HTML content , including the login step ? – Cacography 10/12, 2018 at 8:18

@androiddeveloper: Ok dude, I've started to develop an app for you. – Vespid 10/12, 2018 at 16:23

Issue is resolved. The exploit has been closed.

We will be closing this bug due to being logged in a Preview version of Android. If the issue is still relevant and reproducible in the latest public release (Android Q), please capture a bugreport and log the bug in https://source.android.com/setup/contribute/report-bugs. If a reply is not received within the next 14 days, this issue will be closed. Thank you for your understanding.

Latest update:

This is a bug and Google will address it in the next update.

We've deferred this issue for consideration in a future release. Thank you for your time to make Android better

This answer has turned into a conglomeration of ideas and been edited to include information from discussion in the comments.

The androidmarket api, would be a customised api written by the developer. It's not available to the public.

To address your concerns in the comments. The developer would have utilised the current apis available through Android Developer and Google to create a project that manages all of these.

As for accessing Full Account Access, I'm not sure exactly how these developers have achieved this.

I'd recommend using the AccountManager, which is part of android.accounts, has access to credentials and a method getUserData. The account manager has access to passwords and is capable of creating and deleting accounts. This, possibly used with Content Provider

See Udinic/SyncAdapter Authentication.

To reply to your comment:

This blog should help you to get started. Write your own Android Authenticator.

How these apps actually work, I cannot tell you. They may also have different implementations (unless they're a collaborative effort behind the scenes, they most certainly will be different).

One guess. Firstly use GoogleSignInAccount with com.google.android.gms.auth.api.signin.

There a definition for scope, to determine the extent of the permissions the app is granted.

Using requestScopes(), the

public static final String PROFILE

.../ It lets your web app access over-the-air Android app installs.

For example:

GoogleSignInOptions gso =
        new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_SIGN_IN)
            .requestEmail().
            .requestScopes(new Scope("https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly"))
            .build();

If full access can be gained a list of all apps used by the account holder can be found and compared to what's on the device.

Package Manager will retrieve a list of all apps currently installed on the device.
PackageInfo provides the details about the app.
INSTALL_REASON_USER will also filter out apps that have been actively installed by the user.

You might want to look at com.google.firebase.appindexing and Log User Actions. Different actions can be tracked.

The users account history is found at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.

A helpful link is the OAuth 2.0 Playground.

This github repo node-google-play, using node, is current and will call Google Play APIs. As did the archive that was used as an "unofficial" api, android-market-api, to query the market place.

App 1

The app claims to use the following permissions:

Version 2.1.8 can access:
$ In-app purchases

Other

receive data from Internet

view network connections

full network access

use accounts on the device

prevent device from sleeping

read Google service configuration

Noteworthy, the app doesn't set any permissions when there was a basic, install. I was unable to use any of the features, as I have no paid apps. So for the initial search - there were no permissions needed, which would indicate the app didn't have access to my account.

I checked the permissions - there were none set. So the only thing required was to accept the pop up, as displayed in your question.

App 2

The other app you refer to that does the same thing is more upfront about what is being accessed.

My Paid Apps

SECURITY/PRIVACY NOTICE
The first time you run this app, it will ask for full permission to your Google account. This is unfortunately the only way to access the required information. No personal information is stored, no information about your apps is shared with the developer of this app, nor shared with any third parties. Everything is kept on your phone only.

I've gone into detail over these apps in this blog post, which was for a university capstone project (no monetary gain). I'm inclined to think this is an exploit in the API and not status by design by Google, as there are no API calls to fetch purchases of apps other than the developer's own app. I hypothesize it's a zero day exploit, in which case there's no legitimate way to access this information.

Arboreous answered 8/9, 2017 at 5:48 Comment(0)

In case of one of these applications (My Paid Apps), after checking the network traffic it is pretty obvious that it does use the Store's Account page to retrieve the list of paid applications. Now, the mechanism it uses is the same mechanism that Google Chrome currently, and Pokemon GO supposedly at a point in time used.

In a nutshell, steps to do so are as follow:

Login: What the mentioned program do for the first step is to log the user in and get access to the user's access token. To do so, it uses the android.accounts.AccountManager.getAuthToken() method. (See more: AccountManager) However, as for the token scope, oauth2:https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthLogin is requested. It might be important to note that based on the OAth2 documentation from Google, this scope is not valid; however, it seems like a valid scope for Google OAuth v1.
Converting the newly retrieved access token to a ubertoken: Now, what actually ubertoken supposed to do, is unknown and there is no official documentation about it. However, it was seen in the wild to be used by chrome browser to login users. This is done by requesting the https://accounts.google.com/OAuthLogin?source=ChromiumBrowser&issueuberauth=1 page.
Converting ubertoken to website session: Later on, using the newly created ubertoken it is possible to get a website session using the https://accounts.google.com/MergeSession API endpoint. After this step, the application is essentially capable of loading all personal pages that you can open using your browser while logged in; except some special pages including Payment settings.
Retrieving the list of paid applications: Requesting and parsing the https://play.google.com/store/account page.

Following is the application's traffic as captured by 'Packet Capture':

As it is clearly visible in the picture, the end result is identical to what I get when I normally open the store's account page on my PC with Chrome Desktop:

Side note:

It seems none of these endpoints are documented as they are primarily used by Google's own programs and should be considered internal. Therefore I strongly recommend not using them in any program or code that you expect to run for a long time or in a production environment. Also, there is bad news here for you too, it seems that the Google Play's account page only lists paid applications or special free apps (more especially OEM apps). I will try to find some time and dig deeper into the other application.

Interesting articles:

Pokemon tokens

Exploiting Google Chrome's OAuth2 Tokens

Lumpfish answered 10/6, 2018 at 0:37 Comment(1)

Can you please show a full sample to see how it works and answer the questions I've asked ? As I wrote, I want to get various information about each app: price, when purchased, etc... Is it also possible to get the list of free apps? – Cacography 10/6, 2018 at 9:8

If you have root access, You can access /data/data/com.android.vending/databases/library.db

OnePlus3T:/data/data/com.android.vending/databases
-rw-rw---- 1 u0_a2 u0_a2 229376 2018-12-26 18:01 library.db

This database has all information, which app you have downloaded, which apps you have purchased, and even in which app you have done IAP.

Check ownership table, It has all information.

ownership (account STRING, library_id STRING, backend INTEGER, doc_id STRING, doc_type INTEGER, offer_type INTEGER, document_hash INTEGER, subs_valid_until_time INTEGER, app_certificate_hash STRING, app_refund_pre_delivery_endtime_ms INTEGER, app_refund_post_delivery_window_ms INTEGER, subs_auto_renewing INTEGER, subs_initiation_time INTEGER, subs_trial_until_time INTEGER, inapp_purchase_data STRING, inapp_signature STRING, preordered INTEGER, owned_via_license INTEGER, shared_by_me INTEGER, sharer_gaia_id TEXT, shareability INTEGER, purchase_time INTEGER, PRIMARY KEY (account, library_id, backend, doc_id, doc_type, offer_type))

Faenza answered 26/12, 2018 at 12:38 Comment(0)

Dealing with unofficial Google APIs is incredibly complicated territory. It's going to be possible to get this to work, but that's all I'll say. Proceed at your own risk.

The first thing you're going to need to do is get a Google Play auth token. This can be done several ways, but here's how they do it in Purchased Apps:

public static String getAuthToken(Activity activity, String userEmail) {

    AccountManager accountManager = AccountManager.get(activity);
    Account userAccount = new Account(userEmail, "com.google");

    Bundle options = new Bundle();
    options.putBoolean("suppressProgressScreen", true);

    String token;

    try {
      Bundle result = accountManager
        .getAuthToken(userAccount, "androidmarket", options, activity, null, null)
        .getResult();
      token = result.getString("authtoken");
    } catch (OperationCanceledException e) {
      Log.d(TAG, "Login canceled by user");
      return null;
    } catch (IOException | AuthenticatorException e) {
      Log.e(TAG, "Login failed", e);
      return null;
    }

    return token;
}

A few things to note here:

The above code must be run asynchronously. I recommend RxJava, but an AsyncTask will work.
You must supply a email for the account you want to use. I'll leave the details up to you but this is fairly easy using AccountManager.

After you have an auth token, you can now access any Google Play Store endpoint. The main one used by Purchased Apps is https://android.clients.google.com/fdfe/purchaseHistory. Another one you might be interested in is https://android.clients.google.com/fdfe/details?doc=(package name) (from APKfetch code). Here's a page with some more and some analysis. If you make a request to these APIs, you'll need to supply several headers:

Authorization - "GoogleLogin auth=(your auth token)"
User-Agent - "Android-Finsky/6.4.12.C-all%20%5B0%5D%202744941 (api=3,versionCode=80641200,sdk=" + VERSION.SDK_INT + ",isWideScreen=0)";
X-DFE-Device-Id - your device's Google Services Framework ID, obtained from AdvertisingIdClient.
X-DFE-Client-Id - "am-android-google"
Accept-Language - The device's language code, eg "en".

Now, you need to parse the response. Here's where things get tricky. These APIs returns a message encoded as a Protobuf, so it's essentially just binary data unless you have a schema (which of course, only Google has). One way to go about this in theory is to decompile the Google Play Store app and reuse their generated protobuf models with a tool like JADX.

Unfortunately, I've tried this and it doesn't really work. Protobuf model classes are just too complex for a standard decompiler. What you can use is a tool called PBTK. You'll ideally want to run this on the Google Play Store 6.1.12 APK, since that's the last version before they started using ProGuard. Do note that this program has two errors in its script that need to be fixed before running it: changing 'extracto' to 'extractor' in gui.py and removing the assertion statement on line 500 of jar_extract.py.

Now, that should output all of the response classes as .proto files. Create a folder under src/main called proto and drag the entire generated 'com' directory to it. You can delete everything that's not under com/google/android/finsky/protos. Follow instructions online to setup Gradle with the Protobuf Lite plugin.

When you want to parse a response, you can use the ResponseWrapper class, since they all appear to be contained under that.

That's about as far as I can take you. There's a good chance I got some part of this wrong; JADX is your best friend here, because the best way to figure out what an app is doing is by looking at its code. Hope this helps and happy developing!

Henleyonthames answered 28/12, 2018 at 9:0 Comment(5)

About AccountManager, are you sure it's still available? I think nowadays Google gives only the option to use AccountPicker (like here: https://mcmap.net/q/11118/-how-to-get-the-android-device-39-s-primary-e-mail-address ) . But how do I perform the rest? Have you tested it? Did it work for you? Please share the code for it. That's why I've set a bounty, to see it work in action... – Cacography 29/12, 2018 at 8:34

Yeah AccountPicker is a better idea actually. And yes I did try the code for getting a token and it works great. I haven't tried the rest because tbh that's like at least 5 hours of work if everything goes smoothly. Even a 500 bounty isn't worth that. – Henleyonthames 30/12, 2018 at 0:22

Here's the full code for getting an auth token though (it works just like puchased apps in your screenshot): github.com/ethanblake4/PlayStoreDemo – Henleyonthames 30/12, 2018 at 0:32

Getting the auth-token seems to work well. But the hard part I think is the fetching of the apps themselves :( – Cacography 31/12, 2018 at 19:51

Yes, that is the part that takes a lot of work unfortunately. However, I decompiled the code for Purchased Apps and that is how it is done there. Feel free to let me know if you need assistance on the above steps. – Henleyonthames 2/1, 2019 at 4:58

-2

you can get the package name of all installed apps on device and then get the information of every installed package that you find in the device from google play without any need to get to user account. there is some third party or unofficial apis to get google play apps details as json by getting the app package name. for example: https://42matters.com/ then use the received information for every package to find free ones.

Perimorph answered 3/12, 2018 at 22:13 Comment(4)

No, the question I've put bounty on, is of apps that the user has ever installed, and not just those that are installed now. Also, why use unofficial, if there is an official way... – Cacography 3/12, 2018 at 22:47

@androiddeveloper I guess there is no official api to get app detail by getting package name in google play. is there any official api? – Perimorph 3/12, 2018 at 22:54

@androiddeveloper does google keep name of Uninstalled free apps for every user ? – Perimorph 3/12, 2018 at 22:56

Yes. If you open the Play Store app, go to the nav-drawer, and then to "my apps & games". You will see there all apps you've ever installed from there, and not just those that are currently installed. And according to Google, it is allowed (or at least it seems they say it) to use this API : issuetracker.google.com/issues/79195087 . Or, whoever talked with me isn't familiar with what's going on there... – Cacography 3/12, 2018 at 23:0

-2

i have two resources for you to consider, but first, in a word, no. there is no api from GOOGLE to let you do what you want, as these metrics arent stored in the phone, they are on the google play store servors, and google has no OFFICIAL api for the play store. you can however glean some info from these two sites:

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-API-for-the-Google-Play-Store enter link description here

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/162146/how-to-see-all-the-apps-i-have-downloaded-from-google-play-store

and this is enough to see how to accomplish this.

first, a list of what apps have been downloaded by an account is only referencable by the account. and this can be done through the play store. since your app will be installed on that users phone, this dosnt matter... you're in.

second, you will need a 3rd party API built for the GOOGLE PLAY STORE, there are some out there, check the first link.

using the api of your choice, you will send a get request, to the play store, and in return you should receive in most cases a json object to deserialize.

deserialize the object, and you will have your list. which list you get will depend on the endpoint you use, but that should be explained by/in the API itself.

good luck!

Copley answered 24/12, 2018 at 18:42 Comment(1)

In all links there, I don't see one that gets list of the apps that were installed by current user. They don't even have a login phase. All of them gather generic information about apps, whether the user has installed them or not. – Cacography 24/12, 2018 at 23:21

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