My Android Rooting Journey

Where it all started

KingRoot

After getting my first tablet from Byju's in 6th grade, I was introduced to Android rooting. The idea of unlocking hidden features and actually owning the device fascinated me. I found KingRoot, a one-click rooting app that promised to do the scary part for me. I tried it, fully convinced I might lose the tablet, and it worked. I had root.

At first, I did not even know what to do with that power, so I started with the obvious 6th-grade priority: Game Guardian. I learned from YouTube tutorials how to edit game memory and make one shop item cost -10000000 coins so buying it would give me coins instead. I was thrilled. For a while, that was the whole story.

Redmi Note 8

In August 2019, the Redmi Note 8 Series launched, and my mom bought one. It felt like a game-changer: newer apps, better games, better hardware. Naturally, I wanted more. I started reading about Magisk, then went right back to the dangerous hobby of almost getting beaten by my mom for bricking her phone.

I followed the instructions carefully and rooted it. From there, I tried ROMs, kernels, and mods. I soft-bricked the phone a few times and had to recover it, but the risk was part of the fun. I was switching ROMs weekly, then spending hours setting everything up again. My phone became a lab.

Eventually, I learned that rooting is not for everyone. Some people just want a phone that works. I understood that better in my first year of college, when I no longer had the time to keep chasing the newest ROM every week. I moved toward calmer builds like CrDroid and Lineage: stable, clean, and less exhausting.

Classic ways of rooting rn

you can follow these steps if you have a Pixel 6A like me or any other Pixel device:

If you want to go with Lineage, go to LineageOS and download the latest build for your device. If you want Google Apps, go to NikGApps and download the package that matches your Android version. I usually choose Core and add whatever else I need later.

Step 1: Unlock the bootloader

• Go to Settings > About Phone > Tap on Build Number 7 times to enable Developer Options.
• Go to Settings > Developer Options > Enable OEM Unlocking and USB Debugging.
• Connect your phone to your computer and open a command prompt or terminal.
• Type adb reboot bootloader to boot your phone into fastboot mode.
• Type fastboot flashing unlock to unlock the bootloader.
• Type fastboot reboot to reboot your device.
• After the reboot, you will see a warning message. Press the required button to confirm the unlock.
• After that, your phone will reboot and you will see the welcome screen. (the phone was reset), but now the bootloader is unlocked.
• Now, re-enable Developer Options and USB Debugging.
• And go back to the bootloader again.

Step 2: Flash necessary files

• Download the latest LineageOS build for your device from the official website.(pls make sure to download the correct build for your device)

  • you will need these files(Like for Pixel 6A),
    • lineage-22.2-20250419-nightly-bluejay-signed.zip
    • boot.img
    • dtbo.img
    • vendor_boot.img
  • And you will flash them with these commands:
  • fastboot flash boot </path/to/boot.img>
  • fastboot flash dtbo </path/to/dtbo.img>
  • fastboot flash vendor_boot </path/to/vendor_boot.img>
  • now you reboot to the recovery,
  • continue, to adb sideload ( we will load the actual ROM now,)
  • type adb sideload /path/to/lineage-22.1-20250405-nightly-bluejay-signed.zip
  • Note: all my life, the flashing would complete at ~47% progress and then show an error like "Total Xfer: 0.00X". If you get the same error, it usually means the ROM has been flashed successfully. Do not worry about it.
  • after that you will see a message to flash additional packages before rebooting, select that because we still have to flash the GApps package.
  • type adb sideload /path/to/NikGapps-core-gms.zip
  • you can check the logs to see the apps getting skipped and installed one by one.
  • the guide to customizing the GApps package can be found below

• Download the GApps package from the NiksGApps website (check the Android version as well, it should match the downloaded build's Android Version).

WIP