You can now install built-in apps from Android L on older OS versions

Now that the Android L Developer Preview is out, some enterprising souls have gone ahead and extracted the new apps that it comes with and made them available for everyone to download and try out.

This has happened thanks to a couple of members of the XDA Developers forum, home to all things related to tinkering with Google’s mobile OS.

As you may expect, not everything is working seamlessly right now. Google Earth, Chrome, and the new Calculator are among those apps that still fail to operate on older versions of Android.

On the other hand, it looks like Google Home, Google Now, YouTube, Play Music, Play Services, Play Store, Search, Sound search, Gmail, as well as the new keyboard, camera, and clock applications do work on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above.

You can choose which apps to get or you can receive them all at once through a bulk download. And aside from apps, the wallpapers, fonts, ringtones, alarm sounds, and the swanky new boot animation built into Android L are up for grabs too. All of the information you need is located in this thread over at the XDA Developers forum.

Specifically for getting the new Google Keyboard with Material Design onto older OS versions there’s even another, dedicated thread. The method used in there requires root and a custom recovery, however, as you’re going to install the new keyboard via a flashable zip. Once again, this is said to (theoretically) work for any ROM that’s based on Android 4.0 or above, but as usual when doing things like this – your mileage may vary.

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