How to Update Google Glass to XE17.3 Manually

The XE17.3 update for Google Glass has been leaked, so there’s no way to install it OTA for the moment. But if you can’t wait for Google to release it officially, then you can follow our tutorial to install it manually. It only requires a few steps and it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to do it.

Before you start doing it, you should know that this can void your warranty. Also, if you do something wrong you can permanently brick your device. But if you follow the guide carefully, everything should be just fine.

What you should also know is that XE17.3 is an experimental update and you might experience even more bugs than you do with the current XE17.2. XE17.3 comes with Notification Glance, which is an awesome new feature that allows you to read notifications just by looking at the prism after you hear the notification sound. Yeah, that’s right, you don’t have to use any voice command or tap the touchpad anymore. Read more about XE17.3 here.

Now let’s get to the part where you perform the actual manual update.

Update Google Glass to XE17.3

First you will have to download the signed OTA update file which can be found in our repository here.

Then you will have to make sure that debug is turned on. If you’re not sure about it, check out our article here.

Next you will have to connect Glass to the computer and use ADB to reboot in recovery mode. In order to do that open Command Prompt and navigate to the ADB directory. The command you need to enter now is adb reboot recovery.

Once Google Glass reboots, click the camera button twice and you should now see the recovery screen. Now you have to tap the power button and the camera button so the cursor moves down. Keep scrolling down until you get to the apple update from ADB.

To select that option you have to click on the camera button twice and you will be prompted to perform the update through ADB.

Now you have to enter one more command from your computer’s Command Prompt. The command is adb sideload 7ad63a88b3b1f61729af232bcd3f7ac367b6259b.glass_1-ota-1202243_user-from-1180275_user.zip, unless you’ve changed the name of the archive to something else.

After running the command you have to wait until the update finishes. This could take up to 10 minutes and make sure that you don’t disconnect Glass from your computer or turn it off because it can get it bricked. After the update is installed, it’s recommended to wipe cache, because some bugs could occur otherwise.

If you encounter any problem during the process, please let us know on our forums, where we have a lot of people ready to help you.