Systemless Rooting on Android

Systemless rooting is the newer approach of rooting an Android without temperting the system firmware files. This allows both existing Android operating system to work properly. The downside however, is that any new Android image is updated, you will need to re-root again. This section guides you on how to set up a systemless rooting and actually root the Android device.

Resolving Dependencies

To achieve systemless rooting, you need at least 2 programs: adb and fastboot. Hence, go ahead and setup the computer accordingly.

Download Materials

Once done, you will need to download a number of materials:

  1. TWRP (special bootloader recovery image) - https://dl.twrp.me/beryllium/
  2. Magisk Installer (root image) - https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases
  3. Disable Force Encryption Treble - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1As6z5v7NEIfOk67jXHBX34cbnFZdEjy9/view

Push Magisk and Disable Force Encryption Treble into Phone

Once you have all the images, it's time to push the necessary image files into the Android phone. The 2 files required to be pushed are:

  • Magisk Installer (In this tutorial, we named it "magisk-installer.zip")
  • Disable Force Encryption Treble (we named it "dfet.zip")

To do that easily, you can use the following command with adb:

$ adb push dfet/Disable-Force-Encryption-Tremble.zip /<path>/dfet.zip
$ adb push magisk/magisk-installer-<version>.zip /<path>/magisk-i.zip

Example:

$ adb push dfet/Disable-Force-Encryption-Tremble.zip /sdcard/rooter/dfet.zip
$ adb push magisk/magisk-installer-v20-3.zip /sdcard/rooter/magisk-i.zip

NOTE:

  • You need to make sure your destination is clear of files before pushing. You can clean up using:
$ adb shell rm -rf /sdcard/rooter

Reboot to Bootloader

Once done, we need to install TWRP recovery image for rooting. Hence, we reboot the Android device using the following command:

$ adb reboot bootloader

You will see the Android device blacks out and a reboot is undergoing. You should wait for the Android bootloader logo up before proceeding to next step.

Flash TWRP

Once the Android bootloader logo is up, you can proceed to flash the TWRP recovery image from your computer. You will need the fastboot program. To do that, simply use the following command:

$ fastboot flash recovery /path/to/twrp-<version>.img

Boot TWRP

Once completed, you can now boot the TWRP image. This is done by using the following command:

$ fastboot boot /path/to/twrp-<version>.img

This will boot the TWRP bootloader image.

Install Packages

After loading up TWRP bootloader image, on the Android device, you should install both images we loaded onto it in sequence:

  1. dfet.zip
  2. magisk.zip

Once done, we can proceed to reboot the Android Device.

Check Root Status

Upon returning, your Android device is now having systemless root. You can check it via root checker applications available in Play Store. Keep in mind that upon new Android image flashing, you will need to repeat the same process again.

That's all for systemless rooting on Android Operating System.