Zachary WanderOct 16, 2022

.@[email protected] pointed out to me that the old, abandoned Play Console Android app requires ARM 32-bit support. If your device is x86 or ARM64-only, you can’t install it from the Play Store.

I couldn’t think of any reason it would need a native library, so I decompiled it.

Show threadZachary Wander
First off, for the Java-side, where I’m most familiar, the native library isn’t invoked unless the "playconsole.enable_split_diagnostic" GMS flag is enabled. So it really doesn’t need to be there in a production APK.
Oct 16, 2022 at 6:37pmWeb
Show threadZachary WanderOct 16, 2022
There are two methods in the JNI bridge: "nativeMethodImplementedInDeferredInstalledSplit" and "nativeMethodImplementedInSplitCompatedSplit". As far as I can tell, neither exists in the actual native library in the APK.
Show threadZachary WanderOct 16, 2022

The one method I *do* see in the native library is just called "nativeMethod", and all it does is return the integer value "4".

I don’t get it either.

Show threadZachary WanderOct 16, 2022
I’m not very good at native reverse engineering, so I could be missing something, but either way, this library is only for debugging purposes so it really shouldn’t have ended up in the production release.