Difference between apk (.apk) and app bundle (.aab)

0xAliHn picture 0xAliHn · Aug 28, 2018 · Viewed 77.4k times · Source

Recently Google brought up a new feature app bundle which is a pretty similar concept to APK except its flexibility and architectural differences.

I have read out lots of blog/articles to understand how app bundle works in devices in comparison with APK file.

What is the actual internal working process of app bundle and how it works on Android devices starting from Google Play Store?

Answer

keyboardsurfer picture keyboardsurfer · Nov 20, 2018

App Bundles are a publishing format, whereas APK (Android application PacKage) is the packaging format which eventually will be installed on device.

App Bundles use bundletool to create a set of APK. (.apks) This can be extracted and the base and configuration splits as well as potential dynamic feature modules can be deployed to a device.

The dependencies can look something like this: Bundletool modules

The contents of an App Bundle look kind of like this: Bundletool contents

More information on App Bundles is available here.