Note: The following guide has been written to help users who have a Huawei Mate 30/Mate 30 Pro (or any other Huawei Device with no access to google Play Store), and really need to install certain apps from Google Play. No legal infringement is intended, and users that follow this guide are purely doing this at their own risk. #TechWithAaron assumes absolutely no responsibility if any of the steps (outlined here or inferred) results in any form of legal infringement, malfunction, or damage to you (and your device). This guide may be pulled in accordance to legal policies if an official notice is issued to remove. (But seriously guys, it’s the age of Google, these information to do these are floating about almost everywhere!) But for now, enjoy the content and save/remember how to do it. Cheers!
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro has lots of great features and functions, such as it’s flagship grade processor, as well as astounding camera performance, which many reviews have pointed out.
However, there is a major pain point which these users have to endure: Because of the US Blocking Huawei from accessing any products or services which come from US companies (Yes…It is the US Fault), The Huawei Mate 30 Pro does not come with Google Play services. Huawei has mitigated this with their Huawei App Gallery, which is rather well supported: However here’s how you can get other apps from the Google Play store – If Huawei’s App Gallery does not have it.
So let’s get to it: Here’s how you can install apps from the play store on the Mate 30 Pro!
Note: Unfortunately, I do not own a Mate 30 Pro at this time – So I’ll need your help to be the guinea pig and tell me if it works for you! (I have a strong feeling it’ll work though!). Also, Google Services will prolly not work well (or at all with the Mate 30 Pro, until the nitpicking from the US-Side on Huawei stops.)
METHOD 1: Use Huawei’s Phone Clone App
If you have you’re coming from a previous Android phone, you’re in luck. Using Huawei’s Phone Clone app will let you ‘port’ over your apps from the previous phone to the Mate 30 Pro, Allowing you to access apps you love, without much issue. It’ll also let you port your contacts, messages and other stuff from the old phone, which is pretty essential. Simply follow the instructions on Huawei’s website to back up your old device and do the transfer
The only Disadvantage? Google Play store and it’s services (Including Youtube/Maps) is not ported, and apps that require the use of Google Mobile Services basically won’t work at all.
METHOD 2: Download the App Installer (also known as APK’s) of the applications you like.
Here’s the beauty of Android: Android allows one to install apps using a file that ends with a “.apk” extension. Thus even if Google Play isn’t available, you can still get most of your favourite apps by downloading them from Google Play indirectly, and copying it over to your Huawei Device to install. Here’s how:
- Install a Google Play APK Downloader Chrome Extension. There are quite a few variants available on the internet, but I use “APK Downloader for Google Play Store” . Using your Chrome browser, Press “Add to Chrome” at the website here.
- The following
icon will appear on the top right hand corner of your Chrome Web Browser. Click on it and the following website will open.
- Confirm that the the app you would like to install is available on Google Play store, then Find the URL Link of the app you would like to install. In this case, I would like to install VMOS (This is a perfect example since I’ll be covering that in my next method). Just go to “https://play.google.com/store“, search up the app you would like to install, then click on the landing page of the app you’re interested in.
Caption: Search up the app you would like, then Click on the app landing page. (In this case, I’ll download VMOS)
4. While on this page, Press the 
icon, and a new webpage will appear.
Scroll down the webpage and this is the portion which you’d be most interested in:
5. Press Download APK and save the APK on your computer. If you see an “OBB File”, like you see here, do download that too. Save Both Files on a folder.
6. Once done, If there is an OBB File downloaded, you’ll need to rename the OBB File to a specific name. Follow the steps in the OBB downloader page to rename the app. Simply go to the folder which you stored the file at, and rename the file name of the OBB File (usually the one with a nonsensical string of characters) to a specific naming convention which you would see on the apkcombo webpage
7. Transfer the APK and OBB Files to your phone. You can either copy paste the files directly by plugging your phone into the computer, or use a online cloud storage solution to “upload” the files to your personal cloud, then download it on your Mate 30 Pro Device.
8. Once you have copied the files to your Mate 30 Pro, Simply search it up with the built in file explorer on the device. If you used an online cloud storage solution, most likely it’ll appear in your Internal Storage > “Download” Folder on your Mate 30 Pro.
9. Install the APK File through the built in File Explorer solution on the Mate 30. You will need to allow installation from “unknown sources” – but since we know we have downloaded a clean file, we’re good to go
10. If there’s a OBB file, you have an extra step to do. Move this file to the right place, usually you have to move it to this folder storage/Android/obb/com.appYouDownloaded.abc (See the instructions on the same obb webpage again to find the exact location)
11. You’re done! The only caveat: Again, if there are updates to the app you installed, you won’t get these updates. And this method is also rather painful to do because of all the lengthy steps you have to take for every app you want to install. Ouch…
Additional sidenote: If somehow the apk would not install with the above steps, try going back to step, but this time, change the following options you see on the APKcombo page:
METHOD 3: Use VMOS
Some may be wondering why on earth was I installing this weird app in my above method, called VMOS. Well, here’s why: Because your Mate 30 Pro is really powerful, it can run VMOS. VMOS basically allows you to run a Virtual machine of Android (with Google Play!) on top of your existing Android in the Mate 30 pro – Allowing you access to Google Mobile services (Including Maps/Playstore) through this app.
To install it
- Go to this Google Play landing page for VMOS
- Simply follow the steps on the above “Method 2”.
- Then, open the VMOS app, enter your google credentials (as you normally would on a new device), and get ready to enjoy Google Play access – with one small problem
The speed – Because it’s Android running on Top of another Android – This means your phone is doing double (or even triple) the work to get this to run. This makes access to apps installed through this method run rather slowly – There were comments that youtube videos would be choppy to watch even at 480p! Also, the “Android VM” that is used by VMOS is running Android lollipop (Version 5 of Android), which is rather outdated, so some apps may not be installed, even with this method.
METHOD 4: Install a Huawei Mate 30 Pro image on your phone
Some of you may have heard of LZplay, which was rapidly pulled from its website due to problems with…Google. However, some clever developers at “XDA Developers” hadmade a recovery file which you can install using Huawei’s hisuite – which basically “restores” a working version of Huawei Mate 30’s OS with Google Play access, and allows you to have direct Google Mobile Services, Play store and maps access on your Mate 30 Pro.
Unfortunately, this method was deemed illegal (by you-know-who #Damnit!) and pulled from the XDA Developer threads. The guide is still up – and if you are resourceful enough, maybe you can dig up the recovery file, and try to install that on your device.
Do note that all your existing stuff on the Huawei Mate 30 will VERY LIKELY BE DELETED BY INSTALLING A RESTORE FILE LIKE THIS. Also, there will be some concerns about privacy as installing Restore files means that if you got a malicious restore file from a very shady source (and the person has ‘hacked’ it to do unintended things like stealing user information)…Best of luck.
METHOD 5: Just don’t do any of these
Unfortunately, the common caveats with the first 2 methods I’ve shared above would be that you would not get updates to the applications you like. This means that you’re basically stuck with an older version of each app you install, and would miss out on new features which the app may have to offer until you repeat the processes outlined above, to install a newer version of the app. As for the 3rd method, apps may run slowly, and the 4th method is basically going to be a shady process of finding the now missing files to install.
Thus, For the majority of us, the best solution (other than Method 1) would be to Simply stick to Huawei’s App Gallery – it seems that Huawei is doing what they can to ensure most of the common apps are available on their AppGallery.
If you can’t find the app you would like to install – Perhaps find a way to feedback to them so they can prioritize getting the app to be available on Huawei AppGallery too! That way, you help not only yourself, but also other Huawei users that may be seeking to install the same application as you – but not want to go through the lengthy processes outlined above to “hack” the apps into their new Huawei P30 Devices.
And that’s all there is to this guide! I hope this has been helpful. Bookmark this page, and Like my #TechWithAaron Facebook Page if you enjoyed the content here! 😉
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