📲How to Permanently Stop Updates on an Android Application📲😎

There are many apps that exist out there that some feel were ruined with updates. Some changes range from including adware bundled with the app or the app basically changing into a piece of malware. QuickPic, an app that was once praised for being a lightweight app with a brilliant UI, was bought by Cheetah Mobile and slowly started to include advertisements for other applications. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to stop updates and go back to the app everyone loved, the app that existed before advertisements were pushed on its users?

In the case of QuickPic, the last update before it was changed by Cheetah Mobile was the v4.5.2 update. If we install this APK onto our devices, we could disable automatic updates in the Google Play Store, but what if you accidentally update it when tapping to update every other app on your device? You would then have to uninstall the app then re-install the old version, or restore a backup – both of which can be a hassle. But what if we could stop updates for an app permanently?

How to Re-sign your APK File to Stop Updates

This tutorial takes a bit of set up, but once done you will have all that you need for future files and it will be a lot quicker. For this tutorial you will need Java and a method to open the APK file on your PC. Any standard zip viewer should work fine. You will also need Android Studio. This guide does not need root and simply requires “Allow unknown sources” to be enabled in security settings. For this tutorial, I will use QuickPic v4.5.2. It will work for any APK, however.

Step 1

Navigate to your Android Studio folder and find the keytool application. For me, this is in C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio\jre\bin. Open a command window as administrator and navigate to this folder. You will now need to make use of keytool to generate a keystore for re-signing your APK. Next, type the following into the command window.

keytool -genkey -v -keystore C:\my-release-key.keystore -alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Replacing “my-release-key” with a name of your choice and “alias_name” with a name of your choice. You will be prompted to enter a username and password. Enter these and you’re good to go. Keep the folder and command Window open.

Step 2

Copy the application you want to sign to the folder you found keytool in.

Step 3

Open the APK of your choice with any zip viewer as an archive. I recommend 7Zip. Delete the “META-INF” folder inside of the APK and continue. META-INF contains the key signing files. Copy the APK to the folder containing jarsigner too if you want for ease of use. Jarsigner is used to re-sign your APK.

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