- Hey guys, it's David from the Unlocker dot com
and today I'm gonna show you how you can root
and flash a custom recovery and be able to flash
custom roms
on your Google Pixel and Pixel XL.
(hip hop music)
First off is the warranty for your device.
You won't be responsible for anything that happens,
obviously.
Also this version is written keeping the
Windows version of ADB in mind.
If you have Mac or Linux, the steps will slightly vary.
Before we begin, please head over to our
how to set up ADB procedure,
follow that tutorial,
install ADB on your computer
and then come back to this one.
This is also going to erase everything on the phone
so keep that in mind.
And also we'll flash custom recovery while doing this,
and this should only be done on a Pixel or Pixel XL,
not any other phone.
Now something I learned while doing this is
that you will also need a USB drive
and a USB OTG to USB C adapter.
One of those came with your Pixel
so you can use that unless you've lost it,
then I've linked below for a USB drive that's inexpensive
and also a OTG adapter that is inexpensive.
Okay, so first we're gonna download the files that we need.
We need to download Super SU and save that to our desktop
you can click the link below to get that.
Then download TWRP recovery in both
the dot IMG and the dot zip formats
and also save that to your desktop as well.
Now if you have a Verizon version of the Pixel or Pixel XL
you'll also need the dePixel8 program
in order to unlock the boot loader,
so download that as well if you're a Verizon user only.
So while those are downloading,
regardless of whether you have Verizon or not,
we're gonna enable USB debugging on the phone
and plug it in.
So to do that, you're gonna go to
settings
in the phone,
then about phone,
tap on build number until it says you are a developer,
then we hit back and tap on developer options,
then turn on USB debugging.
After that, plug the device in
via the USB.
Now if you have Verizon,
you're gonna copy that dePixel8
from your desktop over to the ADB folder
that's located in the C drive
which was installed when you did my
how to ADB tutorial.
Then you can open that folder,
hold shift on the keyboard and right click anywhere
that's blank in there and select
open command window here,
and then you're gonna put in the following commands
which you can click below for a list of them.
Once you've done those commands,
your device should reboot into boot loader mode.
Once it does,
you can then type "fast boot OEM unlock"
and hit enter,
and follow the onscreen instructions on the phone
for unlocking the boot loader on the Verizon Pixel
or Pixel XL.
Now if you have any other version of the Pixel,
you're going to, instead of using dePixel,
just skip directly to going into the ADB folder
inside the C drive on the PC, again it
should be there if you did my tutorial on
how to set up ADB.
Hold shift on the keyboard, right click anywhere in there
and select "open command window here".
Then you're gonna type in,
"ADB reboot boot loader"
and hit enter.
The device should reboot into boot loader mode,
and then we can type
"fast boot OEM unlock"
and follow the onscreen instructions to unlock
the boot loader.
Now that the boot loader is unlocked,
we need to connect the USB stick that I mentioned before
to the computer,
then we're gonna copy the dot zip version of TWRP recovery
over to the USB drive,
make sure it's not in any folders
just on the root of the storage.
We're gonna do the same thing with that
super SU dot zip file.
Again,
move to the USB drive,
not any folders on the root of the storage
and we're gonna copy the dot IMG version of WRP
into that ADB folder on the C drive
and we're gonna rename it to TWRP,
this way it's TWRP dot IMG is the final name.
After that, you're gonna have to
pull down the notification shade and go into settings again.
Go to "about phone", keep tapping on build number
until it tells you you are a developer again
because all of this got reset when we unlocked
the boot loader,
then we're gonna go back,
go into developer options and again,
enable USB debugging.
After that we can unplug the USB drive from the computer,
plug in the phone to the computer instead
and then open the ADB folder on your PC,
pull down shift on your keyboard and right click
anywhere on the screen that is blank
and select open command window here.
Then we're gonna type "ADB reboot boot loader"
and hit enter.
When your device enters boot loader mode,
we're then gonna type
"fast boot boot
"TWRP dot IMG."
It'll then reboot your device into TWRP recovery
which is what we just loaded into the ADB folder
a minute ago.
Once it does,
unplug the phone from the computer
and plug in the USB drive into that OTG adapter
and then plug that into the bottom of the phone.
In TWRP on the phone, you're gonna tap
cancel to get past the encryption menu if that comes up,
then we can tap mount
and tap the OTG option that should be there now.
Tap select storage and tap on the OTG option again,
tap back to get back to the main menu in recovery,
tap install,
then we're gonna select that TWRP dot zip file,
and swipe to confirm and let that flash.
When it's done,
we're gonna tap back,
then tap reboot and select recovery.
This will actually boot us into that newly flashed recovery
instead of the one that we booted from the computer.
When the phone enters the recovery mode,
tap on mount,
tap the OTG option again,
then we're gonna tap select storage
and also tap the OTG option again,
hit back to get to the recovery menu,
tap install, and this time we're gonna select
the super SU dot zip file.
Again, swipe to confirm flash
and let it flash.
When super SU is done, and it may take a while,
it may also reboot your phone a couple of times,
you're gonna reboot the device by tapping on reboot
if it hasn't already booted up normally,
to get it to boot up normally.
Once you do that, you can unplug the USB
and OTG from the bottom of the phone
and you should see super SU
in your app drawer.
There you go,
you now are rooted and have a custom recovery.
You can go onto flashing custom roms,
if you want more info on that you can click the link
below to be taken to my tutorial on how to do that
and also I have a rom repository on my site
that's full of roms for these devices
that you can check out.
Also, if you guys are having any issues with this tutorial,
please don't comment here on YouTube.
Click the link in the description below
to be taken to the article on my site
and comment there instead.
This way it notifies me when you do that
and it's much easier for me to help.
Now if you like this video,
please thumbs up it or share it,
it is greatly appreciated and if you want more videos
like this, please
check out the YouTube channel.
I do a bunch of other stuff besides just rooting.
Go check it out, you might like it.
If you do,
please subscribe.
And as always,
thanks for watching.
(hip hop music)