There’s a wealth of useful apps on the Google Play Store. The marketplace has become a leading authority in the industry. It’s increasingly easy for users to download and install these apps on their devices. All you need is an internet connection. But what if you’re in the middle of nowhere and want to get that mapping app that your travel mate is using? No worries. Google has made it possible (easy actually) to transfer applications from one android device to the other via Bluetooth. And here’s the best part – you can transfer paid apps too. But the app reverts to the trial/free version the next time you run Google Play. (To learn how to legally share paid apps on Android, click here).

What you need

To make this work much easier for you, you need to have an APK extractor installed on your device. This is a very small, free app that you can download right now from the Play Store.

The procedure

  1. Launch the APK Extractor app installed on your Android smartphone. Once open, it’ll allow you to browse through a list of all apps that are currently installed and active on your device. This is the first step towards transferring any app to another Android device via Bluetooth.
  2. Select the precise application that you actually want to share. Simply tap and hold on the application till a pop-up menu shows up.
  3. From the options that appear on this menu, select ‘Send APK’. What the APK Extractor app does is that it converts, extracts and compresses the application you want to share into an installable APK file that you can easily send to the other device.
  4. At this stage, you’ll prompted to specify how you want to share the app. Choose ‘Bluetooth’ from the list of options.
  5. If Bluetooth is turned off in your phone, you’ll be asked to turn it on. Simply tap on the ‘Tap On’ option to do this. Make sure that Bluetooth is also turned on in the receiving device. Once you have done this, the sending device will scan for active Bluetooth devices and show then on the list.
  6. Now wait for the receiving android phone to accept the file (Bluetooth transfer), then open the APK file and install the app.
The good thing with this approach is that it allows you to share an app with a device that doesn’t have an internet connection. So rather than just forwarding a Link to the Google Play where they can download the app, you send an APK package that can be easily installed. The process just takes a couple of seconds or minutes at most, depending on the size of the app being transferred. Since practically all Android phones have Bluetooth, it’s a reliable method to share apps with others. Just make sure that you get the APK Extractor in advance.
Image Source: Android Pit

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