Continuing the trend of loading up your device with as many Android 5.0 Lollipop traits and features as you can, you can now also download and install the Google Keyboard version 4.0 from the Android 5.0 Lollipop Preview that was released alongside the SDK this morning. Previously we also reported about the availability to download and install the wallpapers and sounds from Android 5.0 Lollipop, so why not keep it going with the keyboard apk too? There is one catch though if you want to get the Keyboard installed. It requires a rooted device so if your phone or tablet doesn’t fit into that category then this method won’t work for you. Soon enough though there will be a way to get the Google Keyboard 4.0 onto non-rooted devices.
We’ll go through the semi-quick and simple process to get this keyboard installed on your own rooted device, we also have the apk for you courtesy of Android Police. There will likely be a few tweaks and updates in this keyboard from the one that was launched after the first release of the Android L preview back in the summer, but for the most part it will also probably be largely the same or very similar, and the design is no different. It does sport the Material Design look, which is to be expected, and as before with the previous keyboard from the preview you can theme it in either light or dark, whatever you prefer.
What you’ll need to get this going is of course the keyboard apk, which we have linked for you down below, but as we stated this does require root. You will also need to swap out the .so file as the new Keyboard needs that to function. We have that linked below for you as well. before you do anything, we’d recommend a simple backup of your device, just to be safe. Once that’s done, you’re probably still in backup mode so you might as well go ahead and backup your original libjni_latinimegoogle.so file now, which you can get to by navigating to /system/lib in your file explorer. Once the backups are done, install the Google Keyboard 4.0 apk, then go find the .so file you downloaded from the link below and swap it out for the original one that you backed up. Any file manager will suffice for this task. You can grab the apk here, and you can grab the .so file here, then it’s just a simple task of going through the above mentioned steps. Have fun!