If you're a developer who likes to tinker with Android apps and see what makes them tick, you've probably heard of Apktool. And if you've tried to do that with some of Google's recent apps, or any apps that have been updated with Lollipop support, you've probably discovered that the Java applet doesn't always work for them. Developer Connor Tumbleson just posted the third release candidate for Apktool, which should fix most of those problems.

RC3 also has a few smaller updates over the last version, but fixing the Android 5.0 bugs was the biggest issue. Now developers and tinkerers can take a peek into closed Android apps not normally available via standard decompiler. You'll need to delete a single file in your existing setup in order to try out the new version (/apktool/framework/1.apk), and if you don't know your way around Java and .jar files, you might as well just skip the rest of this story.

Apktool still isn't in a finished state, so it's possible you might run into some other problems. (We don't begrudge Mr. Tumbleson for that - he's giving away a great software tool for free, he can take as long as he likes.) You can download the .jar file at the source link below.

Source: ConnorTumbleson.com