Team Win’s TWRP Recovery is the custom recovery you want to install on the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone simply because it’s the best option out there and probably will be for some time to come. It’s hard to imagine anything beating the brilliance of what the open source team of Team Win has created with TWRP, so it just might be the best recovery to install ever.

These are the steps to install the TWRP Recovery on the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone using some ADB commands from a computer that is running Windows. We also have the way you can set up ADB on a Mac or Linux computer, but the steps will vary because they each require unique commands from the command prompt.

Xiaomi Mi 5

Files You Need

  • Download the TWRP Recovery for the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone from here.
  • Download the universal Windows ADB drivers if you are using the Windows operating system during the guide.
  • Download the ADB you need to install for Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems depending on the type of operating system you are running on your computer. Note that our instructions are only written for people who install the Windows version. The commands will change and you will need to know the commands to your own operating system if you are to use this guide.

You are voiding the warranty when you install a custom recovery on the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone using the guide below. You can always return the smartphone back the way it was before you started customizing it and the warranty will start working again. The only exception to this is if you have a device that comes with additional security like we get with Samsung’s Knox security.

As far as we can tell, you do not need to unlock the Xiaomi Mi 5 bootloader before you can follow this guide.

Installing a Custom Recovery on the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone

  1. Enable the USB Debugging Mode on your Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone so you can connect to the computer with the USB cable and run some ADB commands in a minute.
  2. Connect the Xiaomi MI 5 smartphone to the computer with the USB cable so you can start using the ADB and Fastboot on the computer.
  3. Download the TWRP Recovery from the files section above and then extract the custom recovery image to the desktop of the computer.
  4. Set up the ADB using our guide from the files section above and then copy the custom recovery image over to the same folder as your ADB (Android Debug Bridge) that you installed in the previous step.
  5. Change the TWRP Recovery file name to “recovery.img” so you can use the same name when you flash in a few steps time.
  6. From within your folder with ADB and TWRP, hold down the Shift key and right-click the background where it shows you nothing but the white color and then choose to “open a new command prompt window here” from the menu.
  7. Type the first ADB command: “adb reboot bootloader” to get the Mi 5 smartphone in the required bootloader mode for the flashing.
  8. Type the ADB command:  “fastboot devices” just to check that Fastboot is working. If not then you know where to start looking to troubleshoot.
  9. Type the ADB command: “fastboot flash recovery recovery.img” to flash the new custom recovery.
  10. As soon as you type “fastboot reboot” hold the hardware key combination for the recovery mode to boot your Mi 5 smartphone directly to the recovery mode.

In conclusion, that is how to install TWRP Recovery on the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone so you can have a custom recovery image running on the device. You can use that custom recovery now to find out how to root the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone.