Last Updated on January 5, 2023 by Mathew Diekhake

While the Premium and Compact variants of the Sony Xperia Z5 are already rooted, the real one remained unrooted up until now. But with the method below, you should now be able to root your Sony Xperia Z5 – the original phone – and get access to tons of root-requiring apps and other custom developments.

Rooting the Xperia Z5 requires flashing a modified kernel and then booting into a custom recovery to be able to flash SuperSU that then actually roots the phone. Here’s how you can do that all for rooting your Xperia Z5:

Sony Xperia Z5

Files You Need

  1. The bootloader on your Xperia Z5 phone must be unlocked before you can do this tutorial.
  2. This tutorial has been written keeping the Windows version of Fastboot in mind. If you use Linux or Mac, you will need to install ADB on your Linux or install ADB on your Mac to do this tutorial.
  3. You should have ADB USB drivers installed on your Windows computer.
  4. This flashes a modified kernel to obtain root access on your phone.
  5. Download Modified Kernel and save it to your desktop.
  6. Download Fastboot and save it to your desktop.
  7. Download TWRP Recovery and save it to your desktop.
  8. Download SuperSU and save it to your desktop.
  9. You should only do this tutorial on a Sony Xperia Z5. Please do not try this on any other device or you will end-up bricking the device.

Rooting the Sony Xperia Z5

  1. Extract files from Modified Kernel, Fastboot, and TWRP Recovery over to your desktop by right-clicking on each of them and selecting Extract here. Make sure all of the files, namely TWRP Recovery .img, Modified Kernel .img, and fastboot.exe are on your desktop. If they are not, bring them there.
  2. Unlock the developer menu on your Xperia Z5 phone by going to Menu->Settings->About phone and tapping on Build number for 7-8 times. It will say you are now a developer which means the developer menu has been unlocked on your phone.
  3. Head to the newly unlocked menu at Menu->Settings->Developer options and turn on the Sony Xperia Z5’s USB debugging.
  4. Plug in your Z5 phone to your computer using a suitable USB cable.
  5. Open a command prompt window on your desktop by holding down Shift on your keyboard and right-clicking anywhere on the screen and selecting Open command window here.
  6. When the command prompt window opens, type in the following command and hit Enter:
    adb reboot bootloader
  7. Your phone should reboot into bootloader mode.
  8. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter. It will flash the modified kernel on your phone.
    fastboot flash boot z5_stock_fixed.img
  9. Wait for it to flash the kernel on your phone.
  10. When it’s done flashing kernel, run the following command to reboot your device into the custom recovery mode:
    fastboot boot recovery.img
  11. When the custom recovery launches, run the following commands hitting Enter after each command:
    adb shell mount
    adb shell cat /proc/partitions
    adb shell mount /dev/block/platform/soc.0/by-name/system /system
    adb shell mount /dev/block/platform/soc.0/by-name/userdata /data
  12. Now run the following commands to flash SuperSU on your phone. Make sure the name of SuperSU in the following commands match with the name of the SuperSU file you have downloaded on your computer.
    adb push UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.46.zip /data/media/0/
    adb shell twrp install /data/media/0/UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.46.zip
    adb shell rm /data/media/0/UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.46.zip
  13. Reboot your device after all of the above commands have been successfully executed.
  14. You are all done.

Your Sony Xperia Z5 is now rooted.

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