Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX 7 and HDX 8.9 tablets have high-resolution displays, fast processors, and tight integration with Amazon’s app, music, book, and video stores. But they also let you side-load third party apps that don’t come from the Amazon Appstore, and Android Cowboy has figured out how to use that feature to give Amazon’s tablet a little Google flavor.

It’s possible to load some of the Google’s key Android apps without rooting the tablet. That includes Gmail, Google Play Music, the Chrome web browser, and Google Search.

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX with Google Apps

In order to load those Google Apps, you’ll need to do more than just install the individual APK files. You’ll also need to the Google Services Framework, Google Play Services, and Google Account Manager and login with your Google credentials.

If you can’t get the Android Cowboy instructions to load (the site seems to be down right now), there’s a Google cached copy of the page.

Not everything works at this point — Google Plus and Google Hangouts aren’t supported, and Google Now cards don’t show up properly in the Search app. But you can use Voice search, read books or magazines from Play Books or Play Magazines, or watch videos in the official YouTube app (although you can’t yet sign into YouTube to access your personal subscriptions).

Probably the biggest omission is the Google Play Store — you can’t get Google’s app store to work using the Android Cowboy tutorial. That might not be possible until someone figures out how to root Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX tablets.

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One reply on “Running Google Apps on the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX (Gmail, Play Music, etc)”

  1. This procedure may also work for other tablets without Google apps.
    I did the procedure on an Ematic Pro 7 EGP007BL and it worked. Thanks for sharing. Great site. Always great info.

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