Earlier this week, the CyanogenMod team released the first stable build of CM12.1, which is based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. The latest release of CyanogenMod comes with quite a number of new features and improvements that make it a worthy upgrade over CM12.

You can read all about the new features present in CyanogenMod 12.1 here.

If you are looking to install CyanogenMod 12.1 on your Android device, but have no idea where to start, worry not as we are here. In this article, you will find all the details on how to install CM12.1 on your device, the pre-requisites, and other important things that you should be aware of.

Update: You can find the steps to install CyanogenMod 13 on your device here. If an official nightly of CM13 is available for your device, it makes little sense for you to flash CM12.1 on it now.

Pre-requisites

• It goes without saying that if you are interested in installing CM12.1 on your Android device, then it should be rooted with a custom recovery like TWRP or CWM installed. There is absolutely no other way to bypass this method.
• If you own an Android device released in the last two years and it already has an official Android 5.1 build available for it, make sure to upgrade your device to it first. This will make sure that your bootloader and other low-level drivers are upgraded to work properly with the latest release of Lollipop.
• Create a backup of all your important data on the handset. This includes your contacts, messages, music, photos and other important documents and files. You can also backup your app data using Titanium Backup, but I won’t recommend doing so since it can lead to compatibility issues when you try to restore it on CyanogenMod 12.1.

Select a build

The CyanogenMod team offers their ROM in two different flavours: Nightly and stable/Milestone. The former is meant for users who always like to get bleeding-edge features, even though it means sacrificing on stability sometimes. Nightly builds are released by the CyanogenMod team for their supported devices on a daily basis.

Milestone/Stable builds are released months after nightly builds for a particular version are released. For example, the first CM12.1 nightly builds started rolling out sometime in April, but it was only earlier this week that the CM team released the first stable build of the ROM for their supported devices.

You can download the Nightly or Milestone builds if CyanogenMod from their download page.

By default, CyanogenMod does not include any apps from Google due to licensing issues. You will have to flash a separate ZIP package, popularly known as the “GApps” package, to access Play Store, Maps, and other services from Google on CyanogenMod. Thankfully, installing the Google Apps package is pretty easy. You can download the Google Apps package for CM12.1 from here.

Installation steps

Update: CyanogenMod 13 nightly builds which are based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow are now available for most devices, so my recommendation is that you install it rather than CM12.1. The installation steps can be found here.

Just like CyanogenMod 12 and any other custom ROM, the actual steps to install CM12.1 on any Android device are exactly the same as before.

Step 1: Transfer the CM12.1 ROM and the Google Apps package to the internal storage of your Android device. Double-check to make sure that you have downloaded the correct build for your device.

Step 2: After transferring the ROM, you need to restart your Android device into Recovery mode. The procedure to boot into recovery mode is different for every Android device out there and is usually a combination of the volume keys and power button.

If you don’t know the combination button to boot your Android device into recovery, download and use Quick Reboot from the Play Store. Open the app, select the ‘Recovery’ option. Make sure to grant it root access when prompted though.

Step 3: Once your device has booted into recovery mode, you need to wipe the /data and /system partitions of your Android device. Head over to the Wipe option, and then use the swipe bar at the bottom to do a factory reset of your Android device.

Do not use the format data option as it will wipe the internal storage of your Android device. To format the system partition, tap the ‘Advanced Wipe’ option, select ‘System’ from the list of partitions, and then swipe the bottom bar to the right to confirm your selection.

Step 4: Now, you need to install CyanogenMod on your device by tapping on ‘Install’ button in TWRP and then navigating to the CyanogenMod ROM file that was transferred to your device in Step 1. If you are unable to find the ZIP file, make sure to check that you are inside /sdcard folder.

Step 5: Reboot your Android device by selecting the ‘Reboot system’ option. The first boot can take some time, so be patient. Even if your device does not boot into Android after 10-15 minutes and is still stuck at the boot logo, repeat the above steps.

Step 6: If it does boot back into Android, switch off the handset once again and go into Recovery mode. You still need to install the Google Apps package, otherwise, you will not gain access to Google Play Store and other suite of Google Apps. The process to install it remains the same; simply tap ‘Install’ and select the Google Apps ZIP file.

After the ZIP file has been installed, reboot your device back into Android. You can now set it up by logging into your Google account.

Upgrading from CyanogenMod 12 (CM12)

If you are already running CyanogenMod 12 on your Android device, you can easily upgrade your device to CyanogenMod 12.1. While you will be able to update to the stable release of CM12.1 without wiping your phone and losing any app data, you will need to make sure that you flash the compatible Google Apps package right after installing the ROM to avoid any compatibility issues.

Step 1: Download the latest CM12.1 nightly build and the compatible Android 5.1 Google Apps package, and transfer both files to the internal storage of your device.

Step 2: Boot your device into Recovery mode and flash the CM12.1 ROM without wiping the system or any other partition of the device. Then proceed to flash the Google Apps package and then reboot your device back into CyanogenMod.

The above steps will also work if you have modified the system partition of your CM12 running Android device by installing Xposed framework or anything similar. In case your device enters into a boot loop, you can try repeating the steps above. If that does not work, your only option will be to wipe your Android device and then install the ROM.

If you do end up installing CyanogenMod 12.1 on your device, do drop in a comment below and let us know how the installation experience was for you.