google-pixel_su
It was only five days ago that I pondered the question here whether root access on the Pixel phones would be attainable. Despite what appeared to be an insurmountable number of hurdles to jump and hoops to leap through I was confident that it would be possible in the end. I concluded that I had “no doubt that these guys, or some other enterprising developers, will eventually figure it out.” Well it seems I was right, and quicker than I expected.

Just a matter of a few hours ago, renowned hacker and developer Chainfire XDA posted to his Twitter feed with no words except the hashtag “pixel” but had attached a picture. The picture shows an installed SuperSU asking for permission to allow a root access request, demonstrating that the device had in fact been rooted.

Unfortunately, for those who want Android Pay (and other apps that require a phone to NOT be rooted) while also having root access the root method requires DM-verity to be disabled and for the system partition to be modified. This is the old school way of obtaining root access. On Lollipop more elegant forms of root which did not disable DM-verity and were systemless were eventually possible. Chainfire XDA said in a followup tweet tonight that he will be continuing his work to get root working without the requirements of DM-verity disabled and a modified system partition.

For those who still like to have root access on their devices this is great news, especially with the TeamWin custom recovery also well on the way to being finished. Stay tuned to Ausdroid for future updates on this and to see how our resident hackery guinea pig (me) goes trying out these modifications.

***UPDATE*** Victory. Chainfire XDA has now achieved what we were hoping he could. With the system fully intact and DM-verity switchable, apps such as Android Pay should still be able to be used.

Do you still root your phones? Why? Why not?

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