Earlier today we told you about Motorola’s announcement that the Android Lollipop Update for Moto G is coming soon.

But you don’t have to wait to taste Lollipop. Why not try a custom ROM?

You will need an unlocked bootloader on your MOTO G XT1033 to try the following. If you haven’t unlocked it yet, you can do so from Motorola’s website.

You will also need:

A custom recovery.
Cyanogenmod 11 ROM zip
Cyanogenmod 12 ROM zip
GAPPS zip

Download Philz Touch Recovery 6.50.6, if you want to take a Nandroid backup. (MD5: 331d37f30622c6a1123c8285deab132)

Note: The backup function does not work on updated versions.

How to flash the recovery:

Connect your Moto G to your PC using the USB cable.

Open a command prompt with admin rights and type the following commands one at a time:

adb devices

If you see your device listed, head to the next step. Else, you need the USB drivers which you can get bu installing Motorola Device Manager on your PC.)

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot devices
fastboot flash recovery [recovery location and name].img

for eg: If you have it saved in C:\Downloads type, fastboot flash recovery C:\Downloads\philz_touch_6.50.6-falcon.img

Take a NANDROID backup, and reboot the phone. Copy the clockwordmod folder to a PC or an external drive. You can then delete it from your phone to save some space.

IMPORTANT: You have to flash an updated recovery to flash Android 5.0. Do not try flashing the firmware on older recoveries, as it will bootloop.

Download Philz Touch Recovery 6.59.0 MD5: 5b44e7119ac3dc2533622fa398b7b435

Flash it using the steps above.

Download the Cyanogenmod12 firmware for Moto G from XDA.

Also download the minimal GAPPS. (MD5: 3b8fcf5feffae5c2c84ce589dfd304ad)

Copy the ROM and GAPPS zip files to the phone.

IMPORTANT: If you try to flash CM11 over Stock KitKat, it will bootloop. To avoid this we need to flash CM11 first.
So download CM11 as well.

(MD5: fcc1210b5ac5836fbcaa3973070e09ef )

Reboot to the recovery using ADB or manually by powering it off, and then pressing the Power and Volume down keys together. Select the recovery by pressing volume down, and enter it by pressing volume up.

How to flash Cyanogenmod 12 on Moto G:

Follow these steps in Philz Recovery 6.59.0, and remember to flash CM11 first.

Tap on “Wipe data/factory reset” and select “Clean to install a new rom”.
Tap on “Wipe cache partition”.
And then on Advanced > Wipe Dalvik/ART cache.
Finally tap on “Mounts and storage” > Format /system.
Tap on “Install zip” > choose from sd card > select the CM11 rom zip > Yes.

Let it finish installing the firmware. Then, reboot the device.

Now reboot the phone to recovery, and repeat the above steps from 1 to 4, except the last one, you will be flashing CM 12 this time. And don’t reboot, you need to install the GAPPS now.

6. So tap on “Install zip” > choose from sd card > select the gapps zip > Yes.
7. Reboot the device. It will take a few minutes to boot, be patient while it starts up.

Congratulations you have installed a custom ROM Android 5.0.2 Lollipop on your Moto G.

How to enable ROOT in Cyanogenmod 12:

1. Navigate to Settings> About Phone.
2. Tap on the “build number” 7 times, to unlock developer options.
3. Tap on the back button, and select developer options.
4. Scoll down and select “Enable ROOT”.

Cyanogenmod 12 Moto G Enable ROOT - Developer Options

That’s it. You can install Titanium backup or root checker to test if your phone has root.

We ran a benchmark using Antutu, and here is the result. A decent 18126. I’ve also included a screenshot of the available RAM below. It appears to be better than KitKat’s <300 MB RAM, as I have over 400MB of RAM available in Lollipop.