The Story

If you have a Nexus 7 (2012) you reveled in the glory of a cheap and highly functional Android Tablet.

** This only applies to the WiFi only version of Nexus 7. The GSM+WiFi version may be similar, but you need different AOSP at least **

Until... the upgrade of doom.. Android 5.0.0 (and 5.0.x)

Then, your wonderful tablet started to hang and generally became unusable.

Google stopped loving you and never issued another upgrade, and if you were lucky you (or a tech friend) downgraded you to Android 4.4.4..

Well there's now a better way...

Download these

• TWRP Custom Recovery Tool
• AOSP Android Open Source download link
• Open Gapps- You want ARM/7.1/pico

The Process

1. First step, get your Nexus into developer mode.
   1. Find the adb and fastboot tools in your android sdk download
   2. Put them in your path
2. On your device, go into Settings -> About and find the Build Number and tap on it 7 times to enable developer settings. Press back and go into Developer Options and enable USB debugging.
3. adb reboot bootloader
4. fastboot flash recovery twrp.img
5. fastboot reboot
6. Boot into Recover
   1. To reboot, hold down power, volume up and volume down.
   2. You'll get an android on the screen, use the up/down volume buttons to get it to show recovery, then press the power button.
7. Find the factory reset, and do that.
8. adb push <filename for aosp> /sdcard/
9. adb push <filename for open gapps> /sdcard/
10. Find the option to Install
11. Select the aosp (in /sdcard/) and do the install
12. After it's done, you can then install gapps.
13. Then reboot.
14. You should see a prompt to install the twrp app. Go ahead and bring up the play store and do so.