How to Root the Huawei P9 & P9 Plus

Huawei P9 and P9 Plus are two of the premium smartphones by the Chinese manufacturer and the company believes these two will give a tough competition to the rivals like the Galaxy and Note series phones from Samsung. The company’s entering the premium smartphone market with these phones and it seems they’re going the right path as both the phones feature really great specifications.

As I said that the phones have got everything premium, there are still many things that you can add to the phones by rooting them. Rooting means gaining administrative privileges on the phone and then stuffing the phone with all those useful rooting tools. Once you’ve rooted your phone, you can remove the bloatware from your phone, install a custom ROM, install root-requiring apps, and so on.

Gaining root access on both Huawei P9 and P9 Plus isn’t the most daunting task. In fact, it’s just a three-stage procedure that unlocks the bootloader the official way and then flashes a recovery to then flash SuperSU. It’s that easy to gain root and enjoy root tools on the phone.

If you’re ready to root your device, here’s how you can do that:

Before You Begin

1. This could void the warranty of your device. We won’t be held responsible for anything that happens from doing this tutorial so please proceed at your own risk.
2. This procedure has been written keeping the Windows version of Fastboot in mind. If you’re on Mac or Linux, the steps will slightly vary for you.
3. This should erase all the data stored on your device. So, please backup everything that you wish to preserve.
4. You should have ADB USB drivers installed on your computer. Install the drivers if they aren’t already.
5. This should also flash a custom recovery on your device.
6. This procedure should work for both Huawei P9 and Huawei P9 Plus.

How to Root the Huawei P9 & P9 Plus

To root the device, you’ll first unlock the bootloader and flash a custom recovery, and then flash SuperSU to actually root the device. Here’s how it’s done:

Downloading Required Files

1. Download Fastboot and save it to your desktop.
   Fastboot
2. Download the TWRP Recovery for your device and save it to your desktop.
   TWRP for Huawei P9
   TWRP for Huawei P9 Plus
3. Download SuperSU and save it to your desktop.
   SuperSU

Unlocking the Bootloader on the Huawei P9 & P9 Plus

1. Extract files from Fastboot over to your desktop by right-clicking on the archive and selecting Extract here.
   
2. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone on your device and tap on Build number for 7-8 times and it’ll say you’re a developer. It has just unlocked the developer menu for you.
3. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
4. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and enable OEM unlocking.
5. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone > Status and note down the serial number of your device.
6. Dial *#*#1357946#*#* from your device’s dial-pad and note down the product number you see on the screen.
7. Dial *#06# from the dial-pad and note down the 15 digit IMEI number of your device.
8. Head over to Huawei’s bootloader unlock website and create a new account if you don’t already have one.
9. Enter in all the information you have noted down in the previous steps on the Huawei website and the company will send an unlock code to your email address. Do the following steps when you’ve received the code.
10. Plug in your device to your PC using a USB cable.
11. Open a command prompt window on your desktop by holding down Shift and right-clicking anywhere on the screen and selecting Open command window here.
    
12. When the command prompt window opens, type in the following command and press Enter:
    adb reboot bootloader


13. It’ll reboot your device into the bootloader mode.
14. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and hit Enter:
    fastboot devices


15. Make sure your device appears in the devices list. If it doesn’t, you have an issue with the drivers so re-install the drivers on your PC.
16. Next up, type in the following command into the command prompt window and hit Enter. Make sure to replace CODE with the unlock code you’ve received from Huawei.
    fastboot oem unlock CODE


17. It should begin unlocking the bootloader on your device. It shouldn’t take too long, though.
18. Once the bootloader’s unlocked, reboot your device by typing in the following command into the command prompt window and pressing Enter:
    fastboot reboot


19. Your device should reboot.

Congrats, the bootloader on your Huawei P9 or P9 Plus was successfully unlocked, and here’s how you can now flash a custom recovery on your device:

Flashing a Custom Recovery on the Huawei P9 & P9 Plus

1. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone on your device and tap on Build number for 7-8 times and it’ll say you’re a developer. It should unlock the developer menu for you.
2. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
3. Plug in your device to your PC using a USB cable.
4. Launch a command prompt window on your desktop by holding down Shift and right-clicking anywhere on the screen and selecting Open command window here.
   
5. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter:
   adb reboot bootloader


6. Your device should reboot into the bootloader mode.
7. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and hit Enter. Make sure to replace twrp.img with the actual name of the recovery image you have downloaded to your PC.
   fastboot flash recovery twrp.img


8. Wait for it to flash a custom recovery on your device.
9. When it’s done flashing a recovery, reboot your device by typing in the following command into the command prompt window and pressing Enter:
   fastboot reboot


10. Your device should reboot.

You’ve successfully flashed a custom recovery called TWRP on your Huawei P9 or P9 Plus. Here’s how you can now root your device:

Rooting the Huawei P9 & P9 Plus

1. Connect your device to your PC using a USB cable.
2. Copy SuperSU .zip from your desktop over to the internal SD card storage on your device. Place the file in the root directory so it’s easily accessible.
3. When SuperSU’s copied, disconnect your device from your PC.
4. Turn off your device.
5. Turn your device back on in recovery mode by holding down Volume DOWN and Power buttons together.
6. Your device should reboot into the TWRP Recovery mode.
7. Tap on Install in the recovery menu.
8. Navigate to the internal SD card storage and find and select SuperSU .zip to be installed on your device.
9. Tap on Swipe to Confirm Flash to flash the SuperSU file.
10. When it’s done flashing SuperSU, reboot your device by tapping Reboot followed by System in the recovery menu.
11. Your device should reboot.

Your Huawei P9 or P9 Plus should now be rooted.

Now that you have a custom recovery and root access on your device, you should go ahead and load-up your device with your favorite custom ROMs. You can check out our ROMs repository to see if a custom ROM is available for your device.

Let us know how this worked for you!