ACVPatcher is a CLI tool to patch AndroidManifest and DEX classes inside an APK without reassembling resources. ACVPatcher is a replacement of Apktool for the ACVTool purpuses to improve its repackaging success rate.

• Checkout Releases for the last prebuilt binary
• chmod x ACVPatcher to make it executable

ACVPatcher updates DEX classes and/or AndroidManifest inside the APK file. ACVPatcher may insert new permissions, a broadcast receiver, and instrumentation tag into AndroidManifest through corresponding options at once. Finally, this APK file gets signed and zip aligned.

• Adding permissions to AndroidManifest

  $ acvpatcher --permission android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

• Adding a receiver to AndroidManifest

  This example will add the AcvReceiver receiver tag with two intent filters (calculate and snap)

  $ acvpatcher --receiver tool.acv.AcvReceiver:tool.acv.calculate tool.acv.AcvReceiver:tool.acv.snap

• Rewritting DEX files

  $ acvpatcher --class ./classes.dex ./classes2.dex

Here is an example of XML added to patched AndroidManifest

<manifest ...>
    ...
    <application>
        ...
        <receiver
            android:name="tool.acv.AcvReceiver"
            android:enabled="true"
            android:exported="true">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="tool.acv.snap" />
                <action android:name="tool.acv.calculate" />
                <action android:name="tool.acv.flush" />
            </intent-filter>
        </receiver>
    </application>
    <instrumentation
        android:name="tool.acv.AcvInstrumentation"
        android:targetPackage="package.name" />
    <uses-permission
        android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
</manifest>

ACVPatcher is built on top of QuestPatcher modules initially developed by @Lauriethefish