Google Pixel, the first device with in-built Google Assistant, is one of the best Android smartphones because it has been designed thinking about advanced features of Android system. Although the device is built for Android, if you own a Google Pixel device you know that it misses the customizations feature that can only be achieved by root access. Due to the new system partition, tweaking your Google Pixel is harder than it was in the Nexus devices.
But, thanks to the third party developers, you can apply all your favorite custom operations on the Google Pixel too.
The TWRP recovery is a custom recovery image based on CWM recovery to replace the stock recovery that runs by default on your Google Pixel device. Through the stock recovery,you can perform only official Android operations, the custom recovery mode you will allow you to perform unofficial procedures. Among the advantages of rooting your Google Pixel device we mentioned: flashing custom ROMs and custom kernels, system-wide ad blocking,removing system apps,and installing apps from other sources than Google Play Store, full access to the device’s file system, full backups and control of the device and so on are great features.
If you want to get TWRP recovery on your device, this guide should help you succeed with your tweaking plans.
For now TWRP recovery for Google Pixel is still in experimental stage, so it is not yet fully stable. It seems that, the current TWRP built isn’t working very well with SuperSU, and you can lose root access after install the custom recovery image.
Reading the steps below will help you discover tricks that can be applied to keep the root privileges while using TWRP recovery on your Google Pixel device.
You will have to be careful while completing the steps from this guide, because TWRP recovery is not developed by Google and also the installation process is not supported by your OEM. Also, you have to be aware that being an unofficial operation you will lose your Pixel device’s warranty.
To avoid any unwanted situation, before flashing the custom recovery,image make sure that the following prerequisites are met:
- Perform a general backup for saving all your data such us contacts, call logs, images, videos, audio files, internet settings, saved passwords,EFS folder or IMEI / NVRAM data. You can make the backupby syncing your data with your Google Account.
- Install the Google Pixel USB drivers and the Android SDK toolkit on your computer.
- On your device check the USB Debugging option.
- Fully charge your phone to avoid that the Google Pixel get turned off while installing the TWRP recovery file.
Related Article : [How To Download And Install Google’s Pixel Launcher]
How to Install TWRP Recovery in Google Pixel devices
- Download in your computer the TWRP fastboot image file from here, the flashable TWRP recovery installer file from here and SuperSU from here.
- Transfer the TWRP fastboot image file in the same location as Android SDK.
- Connect your Pixel device with your computer using the USB cable and place the TWRP flashable zip and the SuperSU packageto your Google Pixel.
- From the Android SDK folder, open a command prompt by pressing and holding the Shift + Right click on any blank space inside the folder.
- You have to temporarily boot your Pixel device in TWRP recovery, fot that, in the command prompt enter: “fastboot boot twrp-3.0.2-0-alpha1-fastboot-sailfish.img”.
- TWRP recovery will boot on your Google Pixel.
- From TWRP recovery menu select Install and choose the TWRP installer zip file.
- Resume the flashing process and TWRP recovery will be installed on your Pixel device.
- To make sure everything’s okay, reboot your Pixel device. You will see that you’ve lost root on your device.
- Reboot your device to recovery mode again.
- From TWRP menu flash the SuperSU package. This will root your device again.
- When done, select “Reboot”.
- You have installed TWRP on your Google Pixel device without losing the root access.
If during the last reboot your Pixel device gets stuck in a boot loop, turn to recovery and choose to make a hard reset and to clear app data cache by selecting “wipe data factory reset” and “wipe cache partition”.
