Retrieve database or any other file from the Internal Storage using run-as

By design user build of Android (that's what you have on your phone until you unlock the bootloader and flash the phone with userdebug or eng software) restricts access to the Internal Storage - every app can only access its own files. Fortunately for software developers not willing to root their phones Google provides a way to access the Internal Storage of debuggable versions of their packages using run-as command.

To download the /data/data/debuggable.app.package.name/databases/file from an Android 5.1+ device run the following command:

adb exec-out run-as debuggable.app.package.name cat databases/file > file

To download multiple files in a folder under the /data/data/debuggable.app.package.name/ at once - use tar:

adb exec-out run-as debuggable.app.package.name tar c databases/ > databases.tar
adb exec-out run-as debuggable.app.package.name tar c shared_prefs/ > shared_prefs.tar

The accepted answer doesn't work anymore for me (blocked by Android?)

So instead I did this:

> adb shell
shell $ run-as com.example.package
shell $ chmod 666 databases/file
shell $ exit                                               ## exit out of 'run-as'
shell $ cp /data/data/package.name/databases/file /sdcard/
shell $ run-as com.example.package
shell $ chmod 600 databases/file
> adb pull /sdcard/file .

If anyone looking for pulling database from debug application may use the procedure below:

1. search and open device file explorer

2. Select your handset and then browse to data/data directory

3. Now find your application package and go to databases folder. You can see the databases there and upon right click, you will get option to save this in your drive.

I've published a simple shell script for dumping databases:

https://github.com/Pixplicity/humpty-dumpty-android

It performs two distinct methods described here:

1. First, it tries to make the file accessible for other users, and attempting to pull it from the device.
2. If that fails, it streams the contents of the file over the terminal to the local machine. It performs an additional trick to remove \r characters that some devices output to the shell.

From here you can use a variety of CLI or GUI SQLite applications, such as sqlite3 or sqlitebrowser, to browse the contents of the database.

I couldn't get anything else to work for me but this:

adb shell
run-as package.name
cat /databases/databaseFileName.db > /sdcard/copiedDatabaseFileName.db
exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/copiedDatabaseFileName.db /file/location/on/computer/

The first exit is to exit out of the run-as, the second exit is to exit out of adb shell to do the pull.