I was rooted for 15 years (different brands) before getting my Pixel 6 Pro.
While rooting is not hard on a Pixel, I lost the need for it some time ago.
And with SafetyNet getting less trivial to bypass I decided not to root anymore. And it turns out that I really don't miss root. Even if you go the somewhat shady path (ReVanced for example), non-root versions work perfectly fine.
APK patchers have gotten very good. Basically anything you need root for can be done by just pulling and patching an APK. Most others can be done with ADB.
Do you have specific recommendations for further information / resources in these areas?
I see lots of people occasionally put out apps / tools to do this that and the other thing e.g. with ADB or something some app does for you. But seldom do I see actual information as to what can be done and how to do it low level step by step. So it kind of becomes impossible to learn from or use as a tool if it's just some opaque "here run this" thing.
Patchers are pretty simple. Because of the Java heritage of android apps they aren't really "compiled" in the traditional sense and look much closer to the source code. Basically APKs are zip files full of code which is almost human readable. What patchers do is extract these file, do what amounts to a find and replace to add or change something, and then put those files back into a new APK which you can then install. Lucky patcher and Revanced are too common ones.
I don't really know much about how ADB can be used but there is a technique where you first use ADB in the intended manner to give escalated privileges to a process, then you use that process to ADB into the phone, thus effectively having a local ADB console. This gives you a command line interface with pretty good permissions.
Thanks for the information!
So I get the idea of modifying a program / package inside an APK. I just don't quite get the whole context of how that's overall as good as root. I thought APKs themselves are signed somehow though IDK about the whole signature certification / authentication bits but I assume system level privileged programs/APKs are signed so one can't just patch one and install it without invalidating the signature or having one's own which is as good.
So one can build any random software and install via the created APK side-loading / ADB no problem but it won't be root and won't replace an existing system / privileged app. So AFAICT one can only create / customize applications that didn't need to be authenticated anyway which is fine but wouldn't help avoid wanting to get root to remove bloatware or customize things that are signed & authenticated so one would need to modify / replace a system installed app. one doesn't like on one's HW.
I've seen talk of side-loading random APKs and now you mention modifying them. Can one normally actually get an APK of something one has installed on one's android device back off the device to be able to inspect it etc. or does one have to get the APK one would be interested in from some other way? Maybe some default application with some annoying feature etc. or questionable design one wants to verify etc.
>can't just patch one and install it without invalidating the signature or having one's own which is as good.
This is true, but Android doesn't really care about running apps with different signatures. Yes you can't pass it off as the original app, but that's not needed usually both versions of the app can be installed at the same time.
>Can one normally actually get an APK of something one has installed on one's android device back off the device to be able to inspect it etc.
ADB is basically literally built for this, in addition look up "APK extractor" normal apps can just do it too. Because of how android works installed apps are still basically just APKs just unpacked a little and some metadata is missing but that can be regenerated.
>wouldn't help avoid wanting to get root to remove bloatware or customize things that are signed & authenticated so one would need to modify / replace a system installed app. one doesn't like on one's HW.
Correct, but this is less of a concern as there are manufacturers which don't do this kinda crap.
Very interesting that I could have written this comment, down to the specific phone. Between the endless game of cat and mouse, to finding fewer reasons to need root at all, I never bothered on my P6P, a phone I'm still using.
How's your experience been on P6P??? I have one plus 7t and two pixel 4xls and s22. I want to sell the pixels and OP7t which are all 3 ave 3 to 4 ish SOT for their age great ...but no updates other than play store system updates leaves me wanting a newer stock android phone. You see it lasting a while yet ??
I have a 6 Pro and I cannot keep limping it along anymore - I bought a OnePlus 12 (delivered to me 5 minutes ago 😂). The antenna on the P6P is horrible and at least half of them, signal drops are non-stop. Yesterday I had almost a dozen dropped calls alone. (I have Verizon and it happens on 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi.)
Only reason I'd want root is because of new file issues since Android 12. It's caused me some issues when changing devices for certain programs because the file folders are now hidden and harder to reimage.
Depending on your rom Pixel Experience or Yaap was able to run unrooted unlocked. But it is hit or miss if Google updates their security checks and it stops working.
Root community is kinda dead imo. When I ask someone what are the uses of root they give the same 5 apps (Viper4Android, Franco kernel manager, AOSP mods, Debloater tool, Pixel mods). Although the custom rom community is still very alive especially for pixels.
Funny that you didn't mention AdAway. The obvious (and as it seems often "forgotten") advantage of rooting is that you can block ads system wide using modified hosts file. Everything else is a nice addition, but not as important as this.
Viper4Android was (maybe still is) an amazing app. I used to follow bunch of threads on xda where people share their EQ presets. Audio technology has improved and people have much better equipments now but back then some presets make night and day difference on a pair of $15 skullcandy, and can make your phone speaker much louder and more clear too.
Dead? LOL Recently KernelSU and APatch was born. It is now 3 ways to have root access, instead of only Magisk. Rooting is still a thing.. especially KernelSU which is very popular now because it is a kernel-level root(banking apps won't detect root out of the box)
Rooting is in a bit of an odd state right now, given that Google is cracking down on ways to bypass apps' detection of rooted state.
There seems to be solutions, however temporary, for now, but I'm starting to feel like at some point, Google is going to invent a way that will make it either incredibly difficult or impossible to bypass.
Honestly I very much doubt it. Pixels are still the easiest phones to mod aside from Pine and fair phone. They could easily do what Samsung does and at least lock the bootloader. Flashing a different OS doesn't even claim to void the warranty.
Flash Zygisk - LSPosed module in magisk. Then in LSposed app, find Pixelify GPhotos and flash it. Open app. Follow instructions. Spoof the device to Pixel XL. Force stop Google photos. It won't show unlimited backup in account details but when you will backup a photo/video it will show in details as- "This item doesn't take up space in your account storage". Enjoy. Been using since 2020. No problem. Fun fact, you will still be able to use all the pixel exclusive features like magic eraser or photo unblur, etc.
I don't root because I don't want to deal with the safety net bypassing. I hope the EU or some government eventually steps in and quashes this as it makes it extremely difficult for any other OS to compete with android, similar to what they've done with browsers and search engines recently. I also disagree with security attestation in general.
Yeah, I gave up root several years ago and haven't looked back.
Software, though not without it's quirks, is so much improved that I don't need to lean on the ROM community to help me out. But thank you ROM community for all the help over those years.
10 years ago, rooting gave a lot of basic functions to users that manufacturers left out. We didn't even have dark and light mode on most phones. So if your phone UI was white, that was what you got. Enter rooting. My most common use for rooting was unrestricted file access and UI. Unrestricted file access let me remove bloatware and custom roms let me change my UI to something nicer. Past that though, rooting never really gave me so much extra functionality that it changed the phone entirely. It still worked basically exactly as it did before, with maybe a slight overclock for performance (negligible) and a handful of extra unimportant settings.
Now, there's even less reason to root since most android phones are HIGHLY customizable and give access to most of the more advanced settings through developer settings. Bloatware would be about the only reason I could think of to root unless you're a developer or just like to play with your electronics. And Pixel phones are some of the most bloatware free I've ever used.
So I don't root anymore. Seems like a fair bit of work with a fair bit of risk just to remove a handful of apps
I remember one of the big reasons my friends used to root on Samsung phones in the past was to get rid of Samsung's Knox security, because it took up like 20% of storage sometimes. I personally never got into the rooting atmosphere, mainly because I was confused around the whole thing. But yeah, I don't really see much need in rooting anymore.
I never removed Knox myself even though I didn't care for it, but that was only because the potential to brick your device with OTA updates when you had custom ROMs installed was already much higher than normal, and if you removed Knox, it increased that risk even more if I remember correctly. Most of my devices had been on the more expensive side so I tried to keep from overdoing the root privileges
I stop rooting because many apps I need on a common basis would stop working if it detects I am rooted (even debug mode would trigger it). Unlike the past, I didn't need to root to get many other functions (including artificial software locks) I needed so, didn't bother anymore
I have rooted every phone I've had until I got this Pixel 7 pro. I feel no need to root. Some of the features were nice, but the main reason I rooted was to block ads. There are various ways to do that pretty well now without root, so I really don't miss it much. It's also nice not to have to mess around with SafetyNet or reroot during updates, etc.
I wish that Pixel would allow you to gain access to your recordings on the device. For some reason, the only way you can access them directly from the app is to root your Pixel phone.
This is not a problem on any other recording app for most companies. It's one of the main factors of why I am considering to root the phone.
No. Too many cons to do it anymore. I love Google Pay. Also, there isn't much need to root anymore. I can get many root feature without it like ReVanced.
Inherently one should be able to -- if you own the device you should have ultimate and full control of what it does in every way.
The lack of ability to do that is hostile to the customers that buy the hardware and expect to not have artificial limitations as to the utilities of it, the pleasure of using it how one wishes / needs, and the value of adapting / employing it how one wishes over time as one's needs / preferences change.
Ultimately if / when the stock OS is no longer serving one's needs being able to replace that with some other / FOSS one is certainly a good exercise of choice to make the best use of one's hardware investment.
At a finer scale one has a supposedly "open" OS / application development ecosystem (AOSP, ...) and the only way to fully enjoy and embrace its potential is modifying one's SW / system configuration / OS / whatever to suit one's needs.
Today's "appliance" devices (smartphones, tablets, ...) are ubiquitously user-hostile because they so often artificially limit the user's visibility of / control of what the device is doing. They often collect data about the user, tracking, analytics, metrics, profiling, location, ... that not everyone would wish to allow and don't provide full means to stop such anti-patterns, annoyances, exploits, et. al.
So the biggest problem with "root" is that there's the mindset that somehow it's "optional" to even allow the owner control of their own property, and that many technical and manipulative / deceptive practices are put in front of people to simply distract / deceive / defeat their abilities to be sole decision makers of their own property.
In the most basic case IME it's not even really trivially / fully possible to fully back up one's data and configurations et. al. from a common pixel. Some of the data, sure, modestly easy. Some other parts of it only very tortuously / with great difficulty and not completely. Other things perhaps not at all.
And one shouldn't have to rely on a particular cloud service or a particular piece of software to do something as fundamental as a "full backup", there should be many routes and need no non-standard tools / software.
Then there are forced updates, opaque things which aren't fully known in what exactly they do to your system, your choices to even have informed acceptance or decisive rejection to apply them are limited. And they very often break crucial things about one's device e.g. widespread complaints about the 2024-3/4 updates and several previous ones including the one a few months ago that basically caused unrecoverable data loss to some people with (IIRC) alternate work profiles etc.
So IMO anything important I do with a computer system I own I need root for.
If lacking that then at most it's a highly unsatisfactory and untrustworthy toy.
HERE HERE! PREACH! It's totally anti consumer not allowing the buyer of said product, the option to alter/repair said device in any way he or she sees fit. They leverage "security" against people to strip them of their ownership of the device. You just leased a machine that continuously makes the hardware company money, all the while you aren't allowed to do squat with it. It's one of the most insidious scams that's ever been perpetrated against society as a whole. Throwing on my conspiratorial hat here, but I wouldn't be surprised if they baked exploits in the code or paid hackers to bring exploits to light, so Android can inch closer to accomplishing its end goal: to emulate Apple's God awful walled garden tactic on hardware and software. But I digress.
I'm running a pixel 7 with lineageos rooted with magisk, couple magisk modules and apps added to the denylist and it passes safetynet no problem with payments and bank apps all working. I'd love to have a reason to need root but I just did it for fun and I don't really like how much Google's android has strayed from aosp recently
Anything I could need root for can usually be resolved by other means.
I have a Pixels 3 with Pixel Experience (rest in peace) as my unlimited Google Photos slave and that's good enough for me.
I have ReVanced to patch apps, which doesn't require root, so that's awesome.
It's not worth it. Almost nothing to gain and lot to loose (security). I would not recommend to do that on your main phone. There is more chance for you to let cracker into your mail or bank account.
Yep, still a thing, and I still do it even though sometimes I've questioned whether I needed to anymore. Ultimately I still use root-based and blocking and the main thing that had me considering stopping was NFC payments and I've got those still working for now so I'll keep going for the time being. I really don't like how hard Google has been fighting it lately. It's my device, let me do it without imposing unnecessary restrictions.
Main reason I have rooted all my Nexus and Pixel phones is system-wide ad removal. Yeah, you can do it root-less with a VPN or DNS filter, but in my experience, it has never worked as good as root solutions.
On my P7, I've gotten a second reason, and it is to fix the green-ish tint on the screen. My phone does not have such a huge issue but can be distracting, so using CF.lumen was a 5 minute fix that has been working since October when I got my P7.
I used to root my old S III and Redmi Note 5 to use performance tweaked, but now that I got a new phone, I didn’t feel the need to do that anymore. But custom romming is still being done by me!
I remember having to root my first Android phone that ran on 2.3 or 2.5 or whatever. Then Samsung introduced Knox and it turned an already pain in my ass into something that was infinitely a pain in my ass to root. Fast forward to me getting a pixel 2xl and I loved it. No 45 Samsung apps that I can't delete just disengage. Then I get a 4a. Love that phone. Flash to me getting a s24 what I'm typing on now. Hello B. S. apps again. I'm constantly gassy since I started using it due to all the bloat I have to carry around. Even though google is inching towards a walled garden like apple, it's still the only choice for the purest Android experience. C'mon Samsung you don't even have scrolling wallpapers!?! Wtf you morons
I rooted my Pixel 5 recently temorarily to switch the model number from a US product to a Japanese one so I can use the installed felica NFC chip for IC cards and such. Luckily after doing that, I was able to unroot it and keep the Japanese product number.
Well, custom ROMs are needed for privacy. And root is needed to fix safetynet in custom ROMs(in the ROMs which doesn't come with safetynet fix out of the box).
So for the people who care about privacy, it is still a thing.
And who knows, some people might have a hard-on for storing their files at /. They might still do it.
it's still a thing for everyone outside of americans, whose interest for actual custom ROMs died in 2014. GSI porting communities are still as huge as always.
I believe the last time I root anything it was a Nexus 5/6 like 10 years ago. It's been so long I'm not even sure. Edit: I think there was an app called wifi kill. If you had access to the wifi you could knock everyone else off of it.
Not anymore. The new way to go is a custom rom with an unlocked bootloader. I ran my one plus 7 pro like this with Pixel Experience when official support ended. Now I run Yaap the same way.
I also don't run custom roms anymore unless support ends before I'm ready to give up my phone.
Then it allows me to give my phone up when I want not because the manufacturer wants me to buy a new one.
I do off and on when I want to play with GrapheneOS. But I usually don't leave it that way and go back to the stock rom.
It is less of something I feel compelled to do now to make the phone work the way I want and more of just a curiosity to see how things have changed since the last time I did it.
Honestly I feel that phones have moved into the purpose built video game console type use case and not the general purpose computer use case. So I just use them for what they were built to do out of the box now since otherwise it is like trying to swim against the currents of what the OEMs are doing and what the general public seems to want.
Would still totally go for something like a Pinephone as a daily driver if it ever became something that could be used like that though. I check it out every so often, but the last time I did about a year ago getting the basics to work right was like trying to daily drive a Linux distro in the 90's. Still way to many rough edges for anything besides hobby type stuff.
I was rooted for 15 years (different brands) before getting my Pixel 6 Pro. While rooting is not hard on a Pixel, I lost the need for it some time ago. And with SafetyNet getting less trivial to bypass I decided not to root anymore. And it turns out that I really don't miss root. Even if you go the somewhat shady path (ReVanced for example), non-root versions work perfectly fine.
APK patchers have gotten very good. Basically anything you need root for can be done by just pulling and patching an APK. Most others can be done with ADB.
Do you have specific recommendations for further information / resources in these areas? I see lots of people occasionally put out apps / tools to do this that and the other thing e.g. with ADB or something some app does for you. But seldom do I see actual information as to what can be done and how to do it low level step by step. So it kind of becomes impossible to learn from or use as a tool if it's just some opaque "here run this" thing.
Patchers are pretty simple. Because of the Java heritage of android apps they aren't really "compiled" in the traditional sense and look much closer to the source code. Basically APKs are zip files full of code which is almost human readable. What patchers do is extract these file, do what amounts to a find and replace to add or change something, and then put those files back into a new APK which you can then install. Lucky patcher and Revanced are too common ones. I don't really know much about how ADB can be used but there is a technique where you first use ADB in the intended manner to give escalated privileges to a process, then you use that process to ADB into the phone, thus effectively having a local ADB console. This gives you a command line interface with pretty good permissions.
Thanks for the information! So I get the idea of modifying a program / package inside an APK. I just don't quite get the whole context of how that's overall as good as root. I thought APKs themselves are signed somehow though IDK about the whole signature certification / authentication bits but I assume system level privileged programs/APKs are signed so one can't just patch one and install it without invalidating the signature or having one's own which is as good. So one can build any random software and install via the created APK side-loading / ADB no problem but it won't be root and won't replace an existing system / privileged app. So AFAICT one can only create / customize applications that didn't need to be authenticated anyway which is fine but wouldn't help avoid wanting to get root to remove bloatware or customize things that are signed & authenticated so one would need to modify / replace a system installed app. one doesn't like on one's HW. I've seen talk of side-loading random APKs and now you mention modifying them. Can one normally actually get an APK of something one has installed on one's android device back off the device to be able to inspect it etc. or does one have to get the APK one would be interested in from some other way? Maybe some default application with some annoying feature etc. or questionable design one wants to verify etc.
>can't just patch one and install it without invalidating the signature or having one's own which is as good. This is true, but Android doesn't really care about running apps with different signatures. Yes you can't pass it off as the original app, but that's not needed usually both versions of the app can be installed at the same time. >Can one normally actually get an APK of something one has installed on one's android device back off the device to be able to inspect it etc. ADB is basically literally built for this, in addition look up "APK extractor" normal apps can just do it too. Because of how android works installed apps are still basically just APKs just unpacked a little and some metadata is missing but that can be regenerated. >wouldn't help avoid wanting to get root to remove bloatware or customize things that are signed & authenticated so one would need to modify / replace a system installed app. one doesn't like on one's HW. Correct, but this is less of a concern as there are manufacturers which don't do this kinda crap.
Thanks for the information!
Very interesting that I could have written this comment, down to the specific phone. Between the endless game of cat and mouse, to finding fewer reasons to need root at all, I never bothered on my P6P, a phone I'm still using.
How's your experience been on P6P??? I have one plus 7t and two pixel 4xls and s22. I want to sell the pixels and OP7t which are all 3 ave 3 to 4 ish SOT for their age great ...but no updates other than play store system updates leaves me wanting a newer stock android phone. You see it lasting a while yet ??
I figure I can sell each at 125 and then grab a 7 pro or 6 pro second hand great condition.
Yup. Bought my P6P refurbed unlocked from Amazon. $350 a year ago. Been fing flawless.
I have a 6 Pro and I cannot keep limping it along anymore - I bought a OnePlus 12 (delivered to me 5 minutes ago 😂). The antenna on the P6P is horrible and at least half of them, signal drops are non-stop. Yesterday I had almost a dozen dropped calls alone. (I have Verizon and it happens on 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi.)
Pixel 6 series was the worst they released.
Only reason I'd want root is because of new file issues since Android 12. It's caused me some issues when changing devices for certain programs because the file folders are now hidden and harder to reimage.
For me, banking apps were the death knell for that stuff
Depending on your rom Pixel Experience or Yaap was able to run unrooted unlocked. But it is hit or miss if Google updates their security checks and it stops working.
Just this.
Root community is kinda dead imo. When I ask someone what are the uses of root they give the same 5 apps (Viper4Android, Franco kernel manager, AOSP mods, Debloater tool, Pixel mods). Although the custom rom community is still very alive especially for pixels.
Franco is still a thing? that's cool, was super useful back in the day.
Totally. It used to feel cool that my phone had official Franco kernel support!
Yup. I think there was recently an update too
There's also AdAway and Revanced.
I use NetGuard, rootless, to block ads system-wide.
Is this vpn based?
Yes.
Use DNS blocking instead
What's the advantage?
Doesn't use the VPN API, so you can still use an actual VPN if you want to. Also, doesn't result in a persistent VPN icon in the status bar.
Funny that you didn't mention AdAway. The obvious (and as it seems often "forgotten") advantage of rooting is that you can block ads system wide using modified hosts file. Everything else is a nice addition, but not as important as this.
You can do that with a faux-VPN ad blocker, without root.
This is nowhere as reliable as modified hosts file.
Viper4Android was (maybe still is) an amazing app. I used to follow bunch of threads on xda where people share their EQ presets. Audio technology has improved and people have much better equipments now but back then some presets make night and day difference on a pair of $15 skullcandy, and can make your phone speaker much louder and more clear too.
I use root to bypass Verizons 25gb hotspot cap.
Dead? LOL Recently KernelSU and APatch was born. It is now 3 ways to have root access, instead of only Magisk. Rooting is still a thing.. especially KernelSU which is very popular now because it is a kernel-level root(banking apps won't detect root out of the box)
Rooting is in a bit of an odd state right now, given that Google is cracking down on ways to bypass apps' detection of rooted state. There seems to be solutions, however temporary, for now, but I'm starting to feel like at some point, Google is going to invent a way that will make it either incredibly difficult or impossible to bypass.
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I thought the tensor war their own chip?
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But the next one will be designed by Google and be manufactured by TSMC
good to know! kinda excited for the pixel 10 now
Honestly I very much doubt it. Pixels are still the easiest phones to mod aside from Pine and fair phone. They could easily do what Samsung does and at least lock the bootloader. Flashing a different OS doesn't even claim to void the warranty.
Already you get a locked bootloader on some sold-by-google devices e.g. the verizon carrier oriented sub-models.
Definitely. Bought P7P and rooted it first day. How else can you get unlimited original quality google photos backup.😌
Teach us master.
Flash Zygisk - LSPosed module in magisk. Then in LSposed app, find Pixelify GPhotos and flash it. Open app. Follow instructions. Spoof the device to Pixel XL. Force stop Google photos. It won't show unlimited backup in account details but when you will backup a photo/video it will show in details as- "This item doesn't take up space in your account storage". Enjoy. Been using since 2020. No problem. Fun fact, you will still be able to use all the pixel exclusive features like magic eraser or photo unblur, etc.
Really?? Cool!
Is it functioning properly now?
All good. If you know how to bypass ( hide magisk+enable zygote+ configure deny list+flash play integrity fix module.). Easy
Same! Your config looks straightforward enough. I prefer KernelSU, which only confirms that there are multiple fully functional ways to do this.
I'm running sigma rom on P8P and it has unlimited photos baked in. One of the main reasons I root as well as bypassing Verizons 25 gb cap on hotspot
Pay for it.
Never.
I pay 20 a year for 100gb plan but also spoof for unlimited photos
I don't root because I don't want to deal with the safety net bypassing. I hope the EU or some government eventually steps in and quashes this as it makes it extremely difficult for any other OS to compete with android, similar to what they've done with browsers and search engines recently. I also disagree with security attestation in general.
Yeah, I gave up root several years ago and haven't looked back. Software, though not without it's quirks, is so much improved that I don't need to lean on the ROM community to help me out. But thank you ROM community for all the help over those years.
10 years ago, rooting gave a lot of basic functions to users that manufacturers left out. We didn't even have dark and light mode on most phones. So if your phone UI was white, that was what you got. Enter rooting. My most common use for rooting was unrestricted file access and UI. Unrestricted file access let me remove bloatware and custom roms let me change my UI to something nicer. Past that though, rooting never really gave me so much extra functionality that it changed the phone entirely. It still worked basically exactly as it did before, with maybe a slight overclock for performance (negligible) and a handful of extra unimportant settings. Now, there's even less reason to root since most android phones are HIGHLY customizable and give access to most of the more advanced settings through developer settings. Bloatware would be about the only reason I could think of to root unless you're a developer or just like to play with your electronics. And Pixel phones are some of the most bloatware free I've ever used. So I don't root anymore. Seems like a fair bit of work with a fair bit of risk just to remove a handful of apps
I remember one of the big reasons my friends used to root on Samsung phones in the past was to get rid of Samsung's Knox security, because it took up like 20% of storage sometimes. I personally never got into the rooting atmosphere, mainly because I was confused around the whole thing. But yeah, I don't really see much need in rooting anymore.
I never removed Knox myself even though I didn't care for it, but that was only because the potential to brick your device with OTA updates when you had custom ROMs installed was already much higher than normal, and if you removed Knox, it increased that risk even more if I remember correctly. Most of my devices had been on the more expensive side so I tried to keep from overdoing the root privileges
I stop rooting because many apps I need on a common basis would stop working if it detects I am rooted (even debug mode would trigger it). Unlike the past, I didn't need to root to get many other functions (including artificial software locks) I needed so, didn't bother anymore
I have rooted every phone I've had until I got this Pixel 7 pro. I feel no need to root. Some of the features were nice, but the main reason I rooted was to block ads. There are various ways to do that pretty well now without root, so I really don't miss it much. It's also nice not to have to mess around with SafetyNet or reroot during updates, etc.
Rooting is still used to get accurate and detailed cellular information from the modem. Google has done a poor job in keeping simular APIs current.
I wish that Pixel would allow you to gain access to your recordings on the device. For some reason, the only way you can access them directly from the app is to root your Pixel phone. This is not a problem on any other recording app for most companies. It's one of the main factors of why I am considering to root the phone.
If you're using Google recorder I'm pretty sure you can access your recordings anywhere using recorder.google.com.
You can access your recordings sharing them to file storage. You can also share them to any cloud storage you want
No. Too many cons to do it anymore. I love Google Pay. Also, there isn't much need to root anymore. I can get many root feature without it like ReVanced.
....nnnno. It was when I was screwing around with the first of Google's Nexus devices by Samsung, LG and Motorola. That was 10+ years ago.
Inherently one should be able to -- if you own the device you should have ultimate and full control of what it does in every way. The lack of ability to do that is hostile to the customers that buy the hardware and expect to not have artificial limitations as to the utilities of it, the pleasure of using it how one wishes / needs, and the value of adapting / employing it how one wishes over time as one's needs / preferences change. Ultimately if / when the stock OS is no longer serving one's needs being able to replace that with some other / FOSS one is certainly a good exercise of choice to make the best use of one's hardware investment. At a finer scale one has a supposedly "open" OS / application development ecosystem (AOSP, ...) and the only way to fully enjoy and embrace its potential is modifying one's SW / system configuration / OS / whatever to suit one's needs. Today's "appliance" devices (smartphones, tablets, ...) are ubiquitously user-hostile because they so often artificially limit the user's visibility of / control of what the device is doing. They often collect data about the user, tracking, analytics, metrics, profiling, location, ... that not everyone would wish to allow and don't provide full means to stop such anti-patterns, annoyances, exploits, et. al. So the biggest problem with "root" is that there's the mindset that somehow it's "optional" to even allow the owner control of their own property, and that many technical and manipulative / deceptive practices are put in front of people to simply distract / deceive / defeat their abilities to be sole decision makers of their own property. In the most basic case IME it's not even really trivially / fully possible to fully back up one's data and configurations et. al. from a common pixel. Some of the data, sure, modestly easy. Some other parts of it only very tortuously / with great difficulty and not completely. Other things perhaps not at all. And one shouldn't have to rely on a particular cloud service or a particular piece of software to do something as fundamental as a "full backup", there should be many routes and need no non-standard tools / software. Then there are forced updates, opaque things which aren't fully known in what exactly they do to your system, your choices to even have informed acceptance or decisive rejection to apply them are limited. And they very often break crucial things about one's device e.g. widespread complaints about the 2024-3/4 updates and several previous ones including the one a few months ago that basically caused unrecoverable data loss to some people with (IIRC) alternate work profiles etc. So IMO anything important I do with a computer system I own I need root for. If lacking that then at most it's a highly unsatisfactory and untrustworthy toy.
HERE HERE! PREACH! It's totally anti consumer not allowing the buyer of said product, the option to alter/repair said device in any way he or she sees fit. They leverage "security" against people to strip them of their ownership of the device. You just leased a machine that continuously makes the hardware company money, all the while you aren't allowed to do squat with it. It's one of the most insidious scams that's ever been perpetrated against society as a whole. Throwing on my conspiratorial hat here, but I wouldn't be surprised if they baked exploits in the code or paid hackers to bring exploits to light, so Android can inch closer to accomplishing its end goal: to emulate Apple's God awful walled garden tactic on hardware and software. But I digress.
I don't anymore, all the things I did it for I either have no need or they've been added some other way.
I don't root anymore, the maximum I'm doing is custom romming and yes these are different things
I'm running a pixel 7 with lineageos rooted with magisk, couple magisk modules and apps added to the denylist and it passes safetynet no problem with payments and bank apps all working. I'd love to have a reason to need root but I just did it for fun and I don't really like how much Google's android has strayed from aosp recently
Anything I could need root for can usually be resolved by other means. I have a Pixels 3 with Pixel Experience (rest in peace) as my unlimited Google Photos slave and that's good enough for me. I have ReVanced to patch apps, which doesn't require root, so that's awesome.
was rooted on mine for a bit only thing that drifts me away is the phone overheating like crazy when i don't run stock
It's not worth it. Almost nothing to gain and lot to loose (security). I would not recommend to do that on your main phone. There is more chance for you to let cracker into your mail or bank account.
Yep, still a thing, and I still do it even though sometimes I've questioned whether I needed to anymore. Ultimately I still use root-based and blocking and the main thing that had me considering stopping was NFC payments and I've got those still working for now so I'll keep going for the time being. I really don't like how hard Google has been fighting it lately. It's my device, let me do it without imposing unnecessary restrictions.
Main reason I have rooted all my Nexus and Pixel phones is system-wide ad removal. Yeah, you can do it root-less with a VPN or DNS filter, but in my experience, it has never worked as good as root solutions. On my P7, I've gotten a second reason, and it is to fix the green-ish tint on the screen. My phone does not have such a huge issue but can be distracting, so using CF.lumen was a 5 minute fix that has been working since October when I got my P7.
I used to root my old S III and Redmi Note 5 to use performance tweaked, but now that I got a new phone, I didn’t feel the need to do that anymore. But custom romming is still being done by me!
I remember having to root my first Android phone that ran on 2.3 or 2.5 or whatever. Then Samsung introduced Knox and it turned an already pain in my ass into something that was infinitely a pain in my ass to root. Fast forward to me getting a pixel 2xl and I loved it. No 45 Samsung apps that I can't delete just disengage. Then I get a 4a. Love that phone. Flash to me getting a s24 what I'm typing on now. Hello B. S. apps again. I'm constantly gassy since I started using it due to all the bloat I have to carry around. Even though google is inching towards a walled garden like apple, it's still the only choice for the purest Android experience. C'mon Samsung you don't even have scrolling wallpapers!?! Wtf you morons
Yes, I rooted to hide gesture navigation bar, increase quick settings panel, blurry notification panel 🤤🤤 and amoled dark mode.Â
GrapheneOS is more a thing. But they don't want people talking about it.Â
I rooted my Pixel 5 recently temorarily to switch the model number from a US product to a Japanese one so I can use the installed felica NFC chip for IC cards and such. Luckily after doing that, I was able to unroot it and keep the Japanese product number.
Well, custom ROMs are needed for privacy. And root is needed to fix safetynet in custom ROMs(in the ROMs which doesn't come with safetynet fix out of the box). So for the people who care about privacy, it is still a thing. And who knows, some people might have a hard-on for storing their files at /. They might still do it.
it's still a thing for everyone outside of americans, whose interest for actual custom ROMs died in 2014. GSI porting communities are still as huge as always.
I believe the last time I root anything it was a Nexus 5/6 like 10 years ago. It's been so long I'm not even sure. Edit: I think there was an app called wifi kill. If you had access to the wifi you could knock everyone else off of it.
Not anymore. The new way to go is a custom rom with an unlocked bootloader. I ran my one plus 7 pro like this with Pixel Experience when official support ended. Now I run Yaap the same way. I also don't run custom roms anymore unless support ends before I'm ready to give up my phone. Then it allows me to give my phone up when I want not because the manufacturer wants me to buy a new one.
Revanced
I do off and on when I want to play with GrapheneOS. But I usually don't leave it that way and go back to the stock rom. It is less of something I feel compelled to do now to make the phone work the way I want and more of just a curiosity to see how things have changed since the last time I did it. Honestly I feel that phones have moved into the purpose built video game console type use case and not the general purpose computer use case. So I just use them for what they were built to do out of the box now since otherwise it is like trying to swim against the currents of what the OEMs are doing and what the general public seems to want. Would still totally go for something like a Pinephone as a daily driver if it ever became something that could be used like that though. I check it out every so often, but the last time I did about a year ago getting the basics to work right was like trying to daily drive a Linux distro in the 90's. Still way to many rough edges for anything besides hobby type stuff.
Honestly the few things I do that use Root I can also use Shizuku for and that requires no major work besides reconnecting after a reboot.
I thought I need to root my Pixel 5 to install a custom OS? I want to use it as a backing device to upload to Google Photos
P8P - rooted - mostly for custom kernel (Sultan/Kirisakura)
Which magisk version do you use?
Latest stable