I use TWRP (Team-Win Recovery Project) as a custom recovery. It’s easy to use and, as the name suggests, has a nice touch interface. TWRP supports a bunch of devices, including the Nexus 4 (Mako).

Here’s the full description straight from the TWRP site:

Team Win Recovery Project 2.4, or twrp2 for short, is a custom recovery built with ease of use and customization in mind. We started from the ground up by taking AOSP recovery and loading it with the standard recovery options, then added a lot of our own features. It’s a fully touch driven user interface – no more volume rocker or power buttons to mash. The GUI is also fully XML driven and completely theme-able. You can change just about every aspect of the look and feel.

Installing TWRP on your Google Nexus 4 is pretty simple. The TWRP site has good instructions, but I always forget how to update when a new version is released. And checking the actual TWRP site was something I didn’t think of doing, because I thought I had installed TWRP through a separate tool (which I did).

So, the suggested method for installing TWRP to your Google Nexus 4 (and the method I use) is really straight forward. You’ll need root.

  1. Install GooManager from the Play Store and open it up (grant it root permissions).
  2. Select the menu and then tap “Install OpenRecoveryScript”, then tap “Yes”.
  3. Make sure the filename says “mako” in it somewhere, this ensures you’ll get the Nexus 4 recovery.
  4. Tap “Yes” again.
  5. That’s it, TWRP will be downloaded and installed automatically.

Below are some TWRP2 screenshots, taken straight from the TWRP website. If you’re interested in contributing to TWRP, you can check out their project on Github.

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