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Just yesterday, we were able to get our hands on the ASUS C302CA and get the unboxing on video. One of the things that was clear from the initial boot up was that Android Apps are not available out of the box.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, completely.
As with some of the other Chromebooks of late, there is a relatively easy method for enabling the Play Store on your ASUS C302CA if you’ve managed to get one.
As this device will likely become fully available next week, my guess is there will be quite a few of you purchasing one for yourself.
As we’ve previously reported, it doesn’t look like the full roll-out of the Play Store will happen until Chrome OS 56. That looks to be scheduled for the last few days of January, so there is some time you may own this Chromebook before Android Apps become available in the Stable Channel with no additional steps.
But, that’s why we’re here, right?
So, here are the steps you need to go through to get Android Apps:
- Transition to developer mode (if you don’t know how to do this, follow along here. It takes about 15 minutes. Skip to the 1:30 and watch until about 3:00)
- Open a Crosh tab (CTRL+ALT+T), type ‘shell’ (no parenthesis) at the pompt, hit enter, and then enter the code below exactly as you see it
- Enter the code below exactly as it is written and hit enter after each line:
sudo sucp /etc/chrome_dev.conf /usr/local/mount --bind /usr/local/chrome_dev.conf /etc/chrome_dev.confecho "--enable-arc " >> /etc/chrome_dev.conf
After this is done, close the crosh tab and log out and back in to reset the UI (don’t reset or power down). You should see the Play Store option in your settings now.
If/when you actually fully power down your Chromebook, you will have to re-enter the command lines above to enable Android Apps again.
As it has with other Chromebooks, this works very, very well. Granted, we’ll see official, stable channel support in only 4 weeks, so you may just choose to wait.
If you want to try it now, however, you have been shown the way!
