Last Updated on November 16, 2019 by Mathew Diekhake

Once you have unlocked the bootloader on your Motorola Moto G4, you will want to flash a custom recovery on the phone. A custom recovery is what allows you to further customize your phone, such as it allows you to root your phone, flash a custom ROM on it, and do that kind of things.

Although we are yet to see ClockworkMod Recovery being available for the phone, TWRP is available already and getting it flashed on the phone takes only a few minutes.

Motorola Moto G4

TWRP is no less in terms of features than any other recoveries and it has got features like flashing custom files, backing up entire phone, cleaning cache files, and so on. There are a million things you can do with a custom recovery and imagination is the limit here.

Flashing TWRP Recovery on the Motorola Moto G4 can be done using a utility called Fastboot. It will let you flash the recovery using a single command and then you will be all set to use your phone with a custom recovery.

Here’s how to do that all and get TWRP Recovery installed on your Moto G4:

Details You Should Know

  1. The before you can flash a custom recovery on it. If you haven’t unlocked it, do so now using our how to unlock the bootloader on the Motorola Moto G4 tutorial. Once that is done, come back here and continue.
  2. This guide should replace the stock recovery with TWRP Recovery on your phone.
  3. This tutorial has been written keeping the Windows version of Fastboot in mind. If you use either Linux or Mac, you will need to install Fastboot for those variants of the OS by either going here or here.
  4. You should have Motorola USB drivers installed on your Windows computer. Install the drivers if they are not already installed.
  5. You must only try this on a Motorola Moto G4 phone. If you use this on any other phone, you will end-up bricking the phone.

Files You Need

  1. Download Fastboot and save it to your computer. It will be used to send commands to your phone for flashing a recovery.
  2. Download TWRP Recovery for Moto G4 and save it to your computer. It is the custom recovery image that will be flashed on your phone using Fastboot.

Installing a Custom Recovery on the Motorola Moto G4

  1. Uncompress files from Fastboot archive over to your computer by right-clicking on the archive and selecting Extract here. It should make the files available for your use.
  2. Copy TWRP Recovery image over to the folder where you have extracted Fastboot files. Make sure that fastboot.exe and TWRP Recovery .img files are in the same folder or the following steps will not work for you.
  3. Turn off your phone completely using the Power button.
  4. When your phone is turned off, hold down both Volume DOWN and Power buttons together for a few seconds.
  5. Your phone should reboot into the fastboot mode. This is the mode where you can send commands from your computer to your phone.
  6. Connect your phone to your computer using a compatible USB cable.
  7. Launch a command prompt window in the Fastboot folder. To do that, open the folder, hold down Shift on your keyboard and right-click anywhere on the screen and select Open command window here.
  8. This should launch a command prompt window in the current directory which is the fastboot directory.
  9. When the command prompt window launches, type in the following command and press Enter:
    fastboot devices
  10. Your phone should appear in the devices list. If it does not, you probably have driver issues so go and get them fixed first.
  11. When you see your phone in the list, type in the following command and hit Enter. In the following command, make sure to replace twrp.img with the actual name of the recovery image you have downloaded.
    fastboot flash recovery twrp.img
  12. It will flash TWRP Recovery on your phone. Wait for it to do that. It should not take too long.
  13. When it is done flashing TWRP, you need to reboot your phone which can be done by typing in the following command into the command prompt window and pressing Enter:
    fastboot reboot
  14. Your phone should reboot normally.

Awesome, your Motorola Moto G4 was successfully flashed with TWRP custom recovery.

The stock recovery no longer exists on your phone as it has just been replaced by TWRP recovery. Should you ever want to get back the stock recovery, you will need to flash the stock ROM that comes with the stock recovery.

Now that a custom recovery is running on your phone, you should go ahead and root your phone using our how to root the Motorola Moto G4 tutorial.

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