How to Install Android 13 on Google Pixel and Other Smartphones

Android 13 has made its first appearance today and you may be really happy to know that Google has made flash-ready images for Pixel devices available already. If you own one of the supported smartphones then you may be able to give it a shot and experience the upcoming features of Android OS. With the addition of two new devices, Google is dropping the Android 13 support for two old devices; Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL.

As this is a developer preview of Android 13 so you must know that this early build is very experimental and you should proceed with care. You must not install this developer preview build on your daily driver smartphone because these early builds may affect your device in many ways. It may also render your device useless which also may lead to data loss.

So you should NEVER install an experimental OS build on your daily driver device. Once that is out of the way, let’s talk about how you can install Android 13 on your supported smartphone. You can even install Android 13 on your non-pixel smartphone as well so let’s start the installation process but before that, read the precautions.

Precautions

• Android 13 developer preview 1 as the name suggests is a very early and experiential build of Android 13 so make sure not to install it on your daily driver device.
• The device may act a bit unusual after installing this developer preview build so make sure that you are ready for that.
• There are very less changes in Android 13 compared to Android 12 so don’t be disappointed, just wait for the next month for a new build.

Download Android 13 for Google Pixel Smartphones

• Google Pixel 4- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 4 XL- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 4a- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 4a 5G- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 5- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 5a- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 6- OTA | Factory image
• Google Pixel 6 Pro- OTA | Factory image

How to Install Android 13 on Google Pixel Smartphones

For locked bootloader

1. Download the platform-tools zip package on your PC and extract it on the desktop.
2. Download the OTA package for your device from the links provided above. Move this file to the platform-tools folder you extracted in the previous step.
3. Right-click on the Start button and select Command Prompt(Admin) from the menu.
4. On your phone, go to Settings > About Phone > Tap build number 7 times. Then go to Settings > System > Developer Options > enable USB Debugging.
5. Connect your phone to your PC via USB cable and authorize the computer on your phone for USB debugging.
6. Execute these commands one by one on the command prompt:
   cd “address to platform-tools folder”
   adb devices
   adb reboot recovery
7. Your phone will reboot into recovery mode, select apply update from ADB option then execute the final command:
   adb sideload “OTA zip package name.zip”
8. Once the update process is complete choose the reboot system now option to reboot your phone to Android 13.

For unlocked bootloader (this will wipe phone’s storage)

1. Download the appropriate system image according to your smartphone on your PC and extract it.
2. Turn your phone off completely and turn it on by holding down the power and volume down together till you see fastboot mode.
3. Now connect your phone to your PC and execute the flash-all.bat file and wait for the process to complete.
4. Once the installation completes, your phone will boot into the OS automatically.

How to Install Android 13 on any Android Smartphone

Google hasn’t released Android 13 GSI images yet so you need to wait a bit for that. We will update this article as soon we get out hands on the GSI image so make sure to check out this space later.

Wrapping up

This is how you can install Android 13 on your Google Pixel smartphone right now. You can install Android 13 developer preview 1 on all the project treble supported devices too. You can also try it on your PC if you want to so make sure to follow us on social media pages to stay updated on that article.