Google+ App on Kindle Fire HD

The following is a guest post by Scott Benson who kindly provided these instructions based on his experience with the Kindle Fire.

Here are the steps I ended up taking to get Google+ working on the Kindle Fire HD 7 without root:

1.On your Fire, swipe down from the top to get options, click More. In Settings, tap Device, Then turn On “Allow Installation of Applications”.

2. In Settings>Applications>Installed Applications, Remove Facebook, Gmail, and any other apps that might stop working during this process. You’ll know it when you see it – the apps will just keep saying that they’re stopping. FB and Gmail definitely break, so uninstall them now. As for any others, an uninstall/reinstall should work after you’ve installed the Google Service Framework in step 7

3. Go here on your computer: http://androidcowboy.com/android-apk-files-download/

• Under Google Apps for Kindle Fire get: Google Service Framework 4.04, Google Login Service
• Under Google Apps, get: Google+ (it’s version 3.6.1.44747389 as of the time of this writing)

4. On the Kindle Fire, go to the Android App Store and install ES File Explorer (it’s free).

5. Plug your Fire into your computer. If you’re on Win7 or Win8, it should recognize it as a storage device and allow you to access it like a normal drive. If you’re on a Mac, Linux or WinXP, you’re going to need this tool: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_supportredirect_ususbtransfer?nodeId=201022260

6. Once you have access to the Kindle’s built-in storage, create a folder right in the root that you’ll remember. I called mine sideload. Transfer all the apks files that you downloaded in step 2 into your new folder. After that’s done, you can disconnect the Fire from your computer. You can also do this via Dropbox (if you’ve already sideloaded that), or another cloud storage system that works on the Fire (which only appears to be Box as of right now).

7. Launch ES File Explorer on your Fire. Tap the folder you just created (sideload), and all the APKs should be there. Tap Google Services Framework 4.0.4-40049528.apk to install it. If you have multiple versions of these apks for some reason, tap the “list” button in the upper right corner to see the full filenames. After it’s done installing, hit ok, power off your Kindle, wait a few seconds, and power it back on.

8. Launch ES File Explorer again. Tap your folder again (sideload) if needed (it should remember), and tap GoogleLoginService.apk to install that. After it’s done, hit ok, power off your Kindle, wait a few seconds, power it back on.

9. Launch ES File once again. Tap your folder again if needed, tap Google+_3.5.3.42448346.apk to install it. When it’s done, click launch. It’ll ask you to log in. If you’re using 2-step verification, you’re going to have to go to accounts.google.com on your computer and set up an application-specific password for your Fire. When you have that password, type it in on the login screen on your Fire in the password field instead of your Google password. If you don’t have 2-step verification then enter your normal Google password.

10. Confirm that it works, and now you can re-install Facebook from the Amazon Appstore, and then re-install any other sideloaded apps or ones that were broken by the framework.

Easy peasy.

Lastly, make sure to turn off notifications in setting. The Google apps notifications is not compatible with Kindle Fire and will make your notification bar disappear.