If you are at all into the root/ROM community, then you should probably be familiar with Open GApps, which combines the Google services that most of us need for our Android phones (i.e., the Play Store, Play Services, and other Google apps) into a collection of convenient, recovery-flashable packages. In a milestone, today Open GApps has released its first builds for Android 9 Pie. ARM packages are live, with ARM64 and x86 architectures to follow in the next few hours.

There are a lot of GApps packages out there, but Open GApps has some advantages over the average garage-made zips. While the software it distributes isn't all open-source, the tools used by the project to generate the packages are. It's also DPI-optimized and frequently updated.

The most unique feature of Open GApps is its surprising number of individual variants to go with the expected platform and Android version targets. Even if you want every Google app you can get, sometimes there just isn't enough space left in your system partition. From "pico" to "super," and even a custom-configurable aroma graphical installer, whatever phone you have (and whatever its system partition size might be), there's an OpenGApps build to suit your ROM.

If you've been champing at the bit to flash an unstable Pie port to your phone, downloads are now up for Open GApps' ARM packages on Android 9. Note that ARM64, the architecture required for most recent phones, won't be up for another few hours together with x86 and x86_64. If you want to install Open GApps onto a Pie-based image, make sure you've flashed the latest TWRP update for Android 9 Pie, too.

We're told the project would specifically like to thank SpasilliumNexus for doing all the heavy lifting/pull requests. Those that are particularly thankful and generous should consider donating to the project, or at least disabling their adblocker when visiting the site.