It's Android's build.xml (you'll find this under your SDK, tools and ant) that executes AAPT when building. Find your build.xml and replace the "-package-resources" target with the target below. I'm pretty sure (not able to test it at the moment) you'd be able to swith compression on and off with either "-Dcompression.disabled=set" when build with ANT or "compression.disabled=set" in your .propert