Last Updated on September 20, 2024 by Mathew Diekhake
A custom recovery has been available for the OnePlus 3T for a while—but it was not until yesterday that the official version of the TWRP Recovery from Team Win became available for people to install.
It’s probably bested that you waited for the official version because there is quite a lot to know. The new part that people need to know about is triggering dm-verity by swiping right. You can only do that if you are planning on rooting the device. Those who are not planning on flashing the SuperSU should not do it, or else the device does not boot. The dm-verity is an important part of the process, so make sure you follow the steps and take notice of that part in the guide.
A custom recovery is what many people install just for the sake of getting root access, and then they use the root access for installing the applications that require having the root access before they can run. However, the act of installing a custom recovery in itself does not have anything to do with these root applications and thus should always be viewed differently from rooting the Android operating system. The point of a custom recovery is mainly to give people a chance to upload the zip files. These zip files are either going to be the SuperSU or the custom ROMs. If you want to have a custom recovery installed on your OnePlus 3T for no reason other than to install some custom ROMs, then you don’t need to have root access for that. Rooting the Android operating system is only relevant when getting root access on the operating system that is currently running.
With that said, there are plenty of people who want both a custom ROM and root access on the OnePLus 3T. Those people obviously want to have the custom recovery installed for both. You could argue that somebody just wanting root access and no ROMs should just get root access with a one-click rooting tool, but people who are installing a custom recovery image for the sake of getting a new ROM might as well use that custom recovery image for flashing the SuperSU also because it is going to be the most efficient way to end up with both root access to the internal system and a custom ROM installed that replaces the stock version of the Android operating system that is running on your phone.
Prerequisites
- You need to have unlocked the bootloader on the OnePlus 3T smartphone before you can then follow this guide for installing a custom recovery image on the device.
- The official TWRP site showed the same file for the OnePlus 3/3T. That is why the files say OnePlus 3 in the file name.
- Download ADB for Windows on your computer. (You can also get ADB for Mac and ADB for Linux if you run one of those other operating systems, but the commands change so you need to know the commands for those if you plan on using them.)
- Download the Universal ADB Driver on the computer.
- Download the TWRP Recovery (Americas / Europe) image on your computer.
Installing the custom recovery on the OnePlus 3T
1. Extract the TWRP Recovery image from the Downloads folder and then copy all the contents over to the same folder as the ADB, so everything is together in the one directory.
2. Install the Universal Windows ADB Driver if you are using a version of the Windows operating system so you can run the ADB commands without having any driver issues.
3. Connect the OnePlus 3T smartphone to the computer with the USB cable.
4. From the ADB folder, right-click the white background and choose to “open a new command window here” from the menu.
5. Type the “adb reboot bootloader” command, and then the OnePLus 3T smartphone reboots into the bootloader mode, so it is ready for the flashing.
6. Type the “fastboot flash recovery twrp.img” to get the custom recovery image flashed onto the OnePlus 3T smartphone.
7. Type the “fastboot boot twrp.img”command to boot up the custom recovery image that you just flashed and then stop when you get to the screen that asks if you want to allow system modifications and read the next step.
8. You need only to swipe right and enable the dm-verity feature if you plan on flashing the SUperSU and getting root access next. If you do not plan on doing that, then don’t swipe to the right or else the device cannot boot. SuperSU is only for rooting the Android operating system and is not a requirement for flashing custom ROMs.
The OnePlus 3T smartphone now has its custom recovery image installed. The custom recovery image is the TWRP Recovery, and it is the most widely used custom recovery image in the world at the moment.
Those of you wanting to install the SuperSU from the custom recovery image can now find out what it takes to root the OnePlus 3T smartphone running on the Android 7.0 Nougat software updates.
Those of you who were interested in installing some custom ROMs to take over from the version of Android that you have running on your device right now can check out our list of the best custom ROMs for the OnePlus 3T smartphone and see what you think. The list includes the direct link to install the LineageOS custom ROM which is the successor to the now defunct CyanogenMod custom ROMs. It’s just rebranded under a different name.