Root is now available for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL: Here’s what Changed and what Works

As promised, systemless root for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL is now available. XDA Senior Recognized Developer Chainfire was working on root for the Google Pixel phone running Android 7.1 Nougat these past few days, and he has reached a stage in his development where he is now comfortable enough sharing his work with the community.

Root access for the Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL is available by flashing SuperSU 2.78 SR2, which enables su access without touching anything in the /system partition and allowing for dm-verity to be toggled. Before you can root your device, you will first need to have your bootloader unlocked. The first step in unlocking your bootloader is to download the adb and fastboot binaries (we recommend grabbing Minimal ADB & Fastboot from our forums) and then installing the appropriate Google USB Driver for your machine.

If you've purchased your Pixel device straight from Google, then you only need to issue a fastboot flashing unlock command followed by fastboot oem unlock. In case you purchased your Pixel from Verizon or EE, you would need to unlock your bootloader through the dePixel8 tool. But hurry, because the SunShine developers have mentioned that their bootloader unlock exploit may be patched in the upcoming November security update!

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Immediate Uses of Root Access

By the way, besides the usual functionality that root access should bring we've gone ahead and tested a few things that we knew you all would be interested in. First up, can you bring back Google Now on Tap? The answer is yes! All you need to do is edit build.prop with the following change, reboot, and clear Google App data and you'll no longer be greeted with the Google Assistant.

Change

  ro.opa.eligible_device=true  

to

  ro.opa.eligible_device=false  

What about another commonly hidden feature: double-tap-to-wake? We've looked around for the hidden toggle, and have discovered what appears to be it.

  sailfish:/sys/devices # echo 1 > ./soc/7577000.i2c/i2c-3/3-0020/input/input3/wake_gesture  

Unfortunately, when we changed the value it didn't seem to stick. For now, it seems you'll have to flash a custom kernel such as ElementalX to get d2tw working.

Some other things we've tested include whether or not Titanium Backup works (it does), Better Battery Stats (works) Substratum/Layers Themes (seems to be having some issues), and ad-blocking (fails). Ad-away fails to work currently because /system cannot be mounted read-write by default, so we'll have to wait until TWRP is available before we can flash the systemless workaround for Ad-Away. And yes, we've already tried using FlashFire to flash the Ad-Away enabler for systemless root, but that doesn't seem to be working either at this time.

  sailfish:/sys/devices # mount -o rw,remount /system  mount: '/system' not in /proc/mounts  

Here are some screenshots showing that Titanium Backup works, though. So if you're coming from another device and you would like to restore all of your backed up apps, you can be rest assured that all of your app data will be now be restored.

We'll continue to dive deep into our Pixel devices to see what we can toggle. Which "Pixel exclusive" feature will be the next to fall?

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The Struggle to Achieve Root

Chainfire is fairly meticulous when it comes to release notes. When you're the developer providing tens of thousands of users a method to achieve root access, it makes sense to be as transparent as possible lest you face a horde of confused users wondering why something is broken. While his Twitter account (@ChainfireXDA) is reserved more for short announcements, Chainfire tends to post much-welcome, lengthy explanations on his Google+ account. This time is no different.

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To download SuperSU for the Google Pixel phones, head on over to the XDA forum thread. A big thanks to Chainfire for bringing root over to the devices! Let the Tweaking Games begin!

Visit the SuperSU XDA Subforum!

This story is developing and will be updated as we receive new information. One Google Pixel was sacrificed in the making of this article. RIP Jeff's data.

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