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Downloading APK Files of Free Apps from Android Market with Chrome Extension
August 09, 2025
If you own an Android phone or Android tablet without access to the Android Market (e.g., Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet, and the like), you’re definitely missing out on a lot. Manufacturers of such devices usually provide their own restricted, limited, and curated repository of Android apps, although the Android Market arguably still has more apps than such restricted markets provide.
However, in most cases, there’s a workaround: sideloading. If you have access to the APK (Android Package) file of an Android app, you can sideload it to your device. Some app developers provide downloadable APKs of their apps. There are also third-party markets that provide downloadable APKs for apps. (Caveat: Use them at your own risk.) Or, you can use a Market-enabled device to install an app from the Android Market, extract the APK of the app through some tech wizardry, and sideload the APK to the non-Market-enabled device.
That’s three or so hoops that you need to jump through. But, thanks to APK Downloader, you won’t need to jump through hoops like those.
APK Downloader, to quote the developer, is “a Google Chrome extension that allows you to download Android APK files from Android Market to your PC.” The description pretty much reveals what APK Downloader does.
All you need to do is install the extension to Google Chrome and configure it a little bit. The extension works in Google Chrome version 17x upwards. See the steps below.
Once you set it up, you may use APK Downloader to fetch the APK file of a free app from the Android Market. Thereafter, you can sideload the APK file to your non-Market-enabled Android phone or Android tablet.
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