Want Android 4.4 KitKat On Your Jelly Bean Device? We've Got You Covered!

Google announced Android 4.4 KitKat last week. Of course, everyone wants KitKat on their Android device now. If you own a Nexus device like the Nexus 4 or Nexus 7, you should be receiving an OTA update within the next few weeks. The Nexus 5 ships with KitKat loaded on it, but what do you do if you have a device that may not receive an official update to Android 4.4? You make it happen yourself!

There are a couple of ways to get KitKat on your Jelly Bean device right now. XDA Forums covered a few of them here. If you can’t get Android 4.4 on your phone or tablet right now, these KitKat apps are a nice substitute for the time being. The XDA article walks you through loading up the new KitKat Launcher and the updated Camera, Gallery, and Google Now apps on your device.

Now there’s a great guide to getting KitKat on your Jelly Bean device from XDA Recognized Themer ATTACK. You can find that thread here. It will show you how to get the KitKat-style gradients that you want in your Navigation and Status Bars. You’ll need to be running an AOSP-based ROM for these tweaks to work. It does take a little bit of work, as you’ll need to decompile, modify, and then recompile a couple of files. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you with that if you’re not familiar with how to do it.

To top it all off, XDA Senior Member ivn888 put all of the new KitKat sounds, wallpapers, fonts, and the boot animation into a thread too. We already posted the wallpapers here, but you can find the sounds, fonts, and boot animation as flashable .ZIP files in this thread.

If you’ve been itching to get KitKat for your device, you can start with these files and tweaks. At least it will hold you over until Google pushes out an update to you. You can always flash a custom ROM like this Nexus 5 port for the Nexus 4, too. Keep in mind that you take full responsibility for anything that you do to your smartphone or tablet. Be careful, and have fun!