Before that

Make sure you have unlocked your mako. Follow my previous post. Assuming you’ve done that.

Why ?

Well Nexus 4 comes with its own recovery, so why are we flashing our own anyway. The reason is that the default recovery doesn’t let’s you flash custom ROMs and other software you’ll wish to flash. The app of your custom app gives you numerous options like backup and ROM management that will make your life easy. So let’s do it:

• Get the custom recovery. Two custom recoveries are the most popular : [Clockworkmod] and [TWRP]. Just get the respective zip file for whatever you choose. Remember Nexus 4 is called mako.

• Reboot into bootloader You know how to do this right ? Move to the platform-tools/ directory and just enter

 ./adb reboot bootloader 

and your phone will restart into the bootloader

• Flash the recovery Once you’re there, just enter

 sudo ./fastboot flash recovery /path/to/recovery.zip

to flash your chosen recovery.

• Booting into recovery To boot your phone into recovery, you may enter the command similar to bootloader reboot:

  ./adb reboot recovery
  

  or you can do that without the need to connect to your computer by pressing the power button and volume down button simultaneously until you get to the bootloader. From there you can choose recovery by using the volume buttons followed by power button.

Happy flashing!!! [Clockworkmod]: http://www.clockworkmod.com [TWRP]: http://teamw.in/project/twrp2