Android 6.0 Marshmallow now unofficially available for Nexus 4, here’s how to install it

There are a few Nexus devices that got the boot with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and that has left some owners of ancient (just a few years old, in reality) technology very unhappy. But this is Android, guys, and there is no reason we can’t have what we want. Specifically, owners of the Nexus 4 should rejoice: It’s definitely at your own risk, but you can now install an unofficial build of Google’s latest version of Android on your phone. Here’s how to do it…

The unofficial image comes by way of a developer named Dmitry Grinberg, and his instructions on making the image yourself using the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) are published on his website. That’s the theoretically safer method of installing Marshmallow on your Nexus 4, as we can’t prove that Grinberg didn’t tinker with the full working image he provided. The good news is that if you trust him, you can download the full working image that he provided — and installing it is pretty simple.

You can download the image from Dmitry’s website, although the download is taking quite a while at the moment due to high demand. There are mirrors available in the Reddit thread, but it might be wise to avoid these if possible.

While we don’t have a dinosaur Nexus 4 to test it on, we have confidence that it will work given the many reports from Redditors who say it’s working just fine. To install the factory image, simply follow our guide. That guide assumes you already have the ADB tools installed on your computer. If you need the ADB tools, head over and download the Android SDK. The rest of the guide should be pretty straightforward (once you manage to download the image, or create it yourself, of course).