Rooting of the Android operating system has been something millions of people have been doing now for nearly a decade. Over that span, there were always different tools that would come and go, but there were also a few that seemed always to go on forever.

However, times are rapidly changing; it’s not so much that people have lost interest in getting root access as such, but Android developers have purposefully made it more challenging for people to get root access due to new features that have become available and having a device with those features makes having a device with root access riskier.

If you’ve known Android for many years, you might be aware of a guy named Chainifire. . . . He was the guy who created the SuperSU and then later developed the CF-Auto-Root one-click rooting tool. In more recent times he has sold both of those tools off to other people and is no longer involved with getting devices rooted. He says he needed a career change and it was just the right time to move on . . . but that’s also probably not telling the whole story.

It was evident that getting root access had become quite a hassle for Chainfire to continually have to spend many an hour to come up with new methods of getting it done. And when the most recent stumbling block arrived where Android developers wouldn’t allow his normal systemless root because it would trip SafetyNet, it was clear SuperSU, for the first time in what had seemed like forever, was no longer the first tool of choice to use.

There was a solution, at the end of the day, though, and its name was Magisk: a new tool that allowed its users to switch on or off the root access when they needed to use things like Android Pay or Netflix.

It was features like the new Android Pay that posed security risks for its users with root access—due to the nature of how root access works, it allows malware not to be fenced in like it usually would, and thus that meant big risks with your money via banking that was being linked to the Android Pay service. For that type of technology to kick off, Android can ill afford for a massive issue like people getting their money stolen to happen, so you can’t blame them for not wanting devices to have root access in the present day with new features such as these now ripe in society.

Magisk isn’t a tool that Android would worry about; it solved both problems: people get to have root access, and the devices are not any less secure. The chance to turn the root access off (you have no choice but to turn it off) to go and use Android Pay means there is no more substantial risk than using an unrooted device because it is, practically, unrooted, when you have switched off the root access. Then when you’re doing your shopping, all you need to do is turn it back on again—something that’ll only take a few seconds and is not a huge deal at all.

Download Magisk for Android 7.1.2 (Nougat)

Use the links below to download the versions of Magisk that work with Android 7.1.2 Nougat:

Note: Use the latest version possible. And if that does not work, downgrade to the one previous until one works for your device.

How to Install Magisk

There are two general methods for installing Magisk. Most people install it via the TWRP custom recovery image. However, there is also a method to install Magisk without TWRP.