Install Android SDK Without Android Studio

Recently I have found opensource water reminder application. But they don’t provide APK file in their releases. So I want to build the APK file from the source.

I don’t want to install Android Studio. Just want to setup Android SDK and build using Gradle. If you have these kind of niche requirement then this article for you.

I am using GitBash on windows. The steps will work on other operating system as well with minor tweaks.

🥎Install SDK

mkdir -p $HOME/portable/android-sdk

Then Add the ANDROID_SDK_ROOT in .bashrc

tee -a ~/.bashrc <<"EOF"
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT="$HOME/portable/android-sdk"
export PATH="$PATH:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/bin:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/platform-tools"
EOF

Cmdline and Platform tools

Download the cmdline-tools and platform-tools. Then extract those inside the folder

curl -L https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-win-11076708_latest.zip -o $HOME/portable/android-sdk/cmdlinetools-win.zip

curl -L https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-windows.zip -o $HOME/portable/android-sdk/platform-tools.zip

Extract

unzip $HOME/portable/android-sdk/cmdlinetools-win.zip -d $HOME/portable/android-sdk/
unzip $HOME/portable/android-sdk/platform-tools.zip -d $HOME/portable/android-sdk/

Install Android 30. This app requires this platform version.

cd $HOME/portable/android-sdk/
./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root=${PWD} --list
./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root=${PWD} --install "platforms;android-30"
./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root=${PWD} --install "build-tools;30.0.3"
./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root=${PWD} --list_installed

Now you have successfully installed Android SDK in your PC.

To Get the latest zip or file for other Operating Systems from here

To download Command Line Tools Only

To download Platform Tools

If you want to uninstall particular version

./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root=${PWD} --uninstall "platforms;android-30"
./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root=${PWD} --uninstall "build-tools;30.0.3"

🛠Build App

Now I just clone the above app. Then

gradle bundle

Then you can find the apk files in Water-Reminder/app/build/outputs/apk/

📱Connect Your Phone

In Your phone

• Settings → About Phone → Build number → Tab 7 times
• Then Setting → Developer Options → Enable USB debugging

Then connect your phone via USB

./platform-tools/adb devices -l

Now its should list your device.

⛓Install App

To install using adb

./platform-tools/adb install /path/of/app-debug.apk

To install using gradle

gradle installDebug

🐛Issues faced

Try to build the app with android 31

Initially I tried with the platform version android-31 since my mobile Android version is 12. You can find the mapping here

Changed the compileSdkVersion, buildToolsVersion and targetSdkVersion in build.gradle

    compileSdkVersion 31
    buildToolsVersion "31.0.0"
    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "io.github.z3r0c00l_2k.aquadroid"
        minSdkVersion 21
        targetSdkVersion 31

While building the app with that version I got the following error.

Build-tool 31.0.0 is missing DX at android-sdk\build-tools\31.0.0\dx.bat

The fix for this is

cd $HOME/portable/android-sdk/build-tools/31.0.0/
ln -s d8.bat dx.bat

cd $HOME/portable/android-sdk/build-tools/31.0.0/lib/
ln -s d8.jar dx.jar

After this gradle build got success.

Refer Github issue . There is a issue in both 31 and 32 version of tools.

Cannot install without signing

Initially try to install normal APK. Its not installed and got error. Debug build solves that problem

Different Notification tone for this app

Since its a water reminder app. I want to send different notification sound for this. To do that.

Settings → Apps → All apps → Water Reminder

Click on the Notification Channel. Then select the sound in that