If you happen to own an Android smartphone there’s high chance you might have rooted it. And with rooting you might have installed a custom ROM. Most custom ROMs come ready out of the box but with some (CyanogenMod) they have one key aspect missing: Gapps. Gapps is an abbreviated term for Google apps.
What are Google apps? Google Play Store, Google Talk, Google Sync, Google Backup Transport, Car Home, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Search, Google Voice Search, Google Music, and Google Docs. For whatever reason they are missing, you’ll need to download Gapps and install them on your Android device.
If you ever decide to install CyanogenMod custom ROM on your smartphone, the following links, each separate for a different CM version, will get you your Gapps. Download Gapps using the following links:
- CyanogenMod 10 (Android 4.1.1 – 4.1.2)
- CyanogenMod 9 (Android 4.0.3 – 4.0.4)
- CyanogenMod 7.1 and above (Android 2.3.5 – 2.3.7)
- Android 2.3.4
- CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3.3)
To install these you need to boot into download mode. The method for that varies with each phone, but usually it’s a key combination of volume up + home + power. After that simply flash the downloaded zip file.