Flashing a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod 11 to your device can be a fun and rewarding experience, with things like learning how to flash a ROM, and the best part being all the new tweaks and features you’ll get from whatever ROM you have chosen to load onto your device. Like many things in life though, flashing a ROM has to be done in steps, and those steps can be easy to forget. One of the more forgettable ones happens to be flashing Gapps directly after you’re done flashing the custom ROM of your choice. There’s also the possibility of accidentally downloading and flashing the wrong Gapps package which, could result in a bootloop. Finding the right version of Gapps has never been terribly difficult, but as stated by XDA Developers, (where you typically find many of your ROM and flashing procedures)the release of Android 4.4 Kit Kat has nullified the ability to download the updated Gapps from goo.im which is an Android File Hosting site.
Thankfully, someone at XDA knows this pain and wants to make sure things stay as simple as possible for those of us that like to flash things frequently, and need a quick and painless way to get our hands on the correct Gapps files we need. Senior Member ebildude123, has developed an app that is easy to use and makes it simple to download the right files. The apps lets you download whatever version of Gapps is right for you, directly into your smartphone or tablets main storage, where you can get to it easily and flash it from your custom recovery. Gapps Manager works with any version of Android , as long as you’re running OS version 2.3.3 Gingerbread and forward.
Ebildude has even included the ability for Gapps Manager to get Gapps packages that are compatible with the new ART runtime, if you need it. Some of you may not know where to find the information that lists what version of Gapps you need, which would be a problem if Gapps Manager didn’t tell you. Yep, the app lists what version of the OS you’re running(although you should know this before delving into such things as Rooting and flashing ROM’s) and uses that to tell you what version of Gapps you need to download. It really couldn’t be any simpler short of having someone do all the work for you and just handing you back the device once they’re done. Now just in case you’re not sure what exactly Gapps does, its basically the package file that contains all your “Google” apps, as they don’t usually come pre-loaded with most ROM’s. You will need to flash this in order to get the Play Store(among other Google apps) onto your device after flashing your new ROM. If this sounds like an app you’ll find useful, you can head on over to the app thread and download it. As always when venturing into territories such as this, read everything before you attempt anything, and Happy Flashing!