Dumpsys Packages Copycat

With the introduction of the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission , as far as I understand, it became impossible to use built-in tools to list and inspect installed packages. (Please let me know if you are aware of another workaround.)

That is, of course, assuming you don't have access to root privileges. However, you might not desire to root your phone, either because it can turn out to be quite difficult to achieve, or because it has numerous disadvantages in itself, anyway.

Another option is to connect to the phone via Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and run:

adb shell dumpsys | sed -n '/^Packages:/,/^[[:space:]]*$/p'

The command prints the "Packages" section from dumpsys , which contains detailed information about every installed package. It works, but the downside is obvious: You need an extra device to connect and run adb .

This app strives to reproduce the output from above command, right on your phone - neither root privileges nor ADB required - using only API calls and the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission.