How to Root the OnePlus 3T

The OnePlus 3T is successor to the OnePlus 3 which was launched a few months ago. The 3T comes packed with 6GB of RAM, 64/128GB internal memory, and a 16MP camera. The phone comes at a great price and you can buy it without having to break the bank.

Although the phone’s loaded with all the features and runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with a planned upgrade to Android 7.0 Nougat, there’re still many things that can be improved on it. On an Android device, many things can be customized if you just root it. The same is with the OnePlus 3T.

If you root your phone, you can get access to hundreds of root-only apps that help you utilize the actual power of the device, remove unwanted stock apps from your device, and even flash new versions of Android in the form of custom ROMs. All that can be yours if you just root your device and flash a custom recovery on it.

OnePlus isn’t one of those companies that put a lot of restrictions on their phones when it comes to rooting (Verizon?). It’s very flexible since it was the company that had CyanogenMod as the main OS of their phones. Rooting the latest 3T is just as easy as rooting the previous phones of this company was.

Here’s how you can go about rooting your OnePlus 3T:

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. You should have set up ADB on your PC. You will use it to issue commands to your device.
3. The following procedure has been written keeping the Windows version of Fastboot in mind. If you’re on Linux or Mac, the steps will slightly vary for you.
4. Since this will unlock the bootloader, this will erase all the data stored on your device. So, please backup everything that you wish to preserve.
5. This should also flash a custom recovery called TWRP on your device.
6. You should only do this on a OnePlus 3T device. Doing this on any other device will brick the device.

How to Root the OnePlus 3T

To root the device, you’ll first unlock the bootloader, flash a custom recovery, and then use the custom recovery to flash SuperSU to actually gain root access. Here’s how to do that all one by one:

Downloading Required Files

1. Download TWRP Recovery and save it to your desktop.
   TWRP Recovery (Download the latest version available)
2. Download SuperSU and save it to your desktop.
   SuperSU
3. Download No-Verify and save it to your desktop.
   No-Verify

Unlocking the Bootloader on the OnePlus 3T

1. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone on your device and tap on Build number for 7 times and it will say you’re a developer.
2. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
3. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and enable OEM Unlocking.
4. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on Advanced Reboot.
5. Turn off your device.
6. Turn your device back on in fastboot mode by holding down Volume Up and Power buttons together for a few seconds.
7. Plug in your device to your PC using a USB cable.
8. Open the ADB folder located in the C:/ drive of your PC and hold down Shift on your keyboard and right-click anywhere on the screen and select Open command window here. It’ll open a command prompt window in the ADB folder.
9. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter:
   fastboot devices
10. Your device should show up in the list.
11. Then, enter in the following command into the command prompt window and hit Enter:
    fastboot oem unlock
12. Follow the on-screen instructions for unlocking the bootloader on the device.
13. When the bootloader’s unlocked, issue the following command using command prompt window:
    fastboot reboot
14. Your device should reboot.

You’ve successfully unlocked the bootloader on your OnePlus 3T and you can now go ahead and flash a custom recovery on your device using the following steps:

Flashing a Custom Recovery on the OnePlus 3T

1. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone on your device and tap on Build number for 7 times to unlock the developer menu.
2. Head to the newly unlocked menu at Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
3. Enable the OEM Unlocking and Advanced Reboot options from the Menu > Settings > Developer options panel.
4. Copy SuperSU .zip and No-Verify.zip from your desktop over to the internal storage on your device.
5. Turn off your device.
6. Reboot your device into the fastboot mode by holding down Volume Up and Power buttons together.
7. Plug in your device to your PC using a USB cable.
8. Copy TWRP Recovery .img from your desktop over to the ADB folder in the C:/ drive of your PC.
9. Right-click on the recovery file and select Rename and enter recovery.img as the new name. Make sure it’s recovery.img and not recovery.img.img.
10. Open the ADB folder and hold down Shift and right-click anywhere on the screen and select Open command window here to open a new command prompt window.
11. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter:
    fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
12. Wait for it to flash TWRP Recovery on your device.
13. When the recovery’s flashed, do not reboot your device. Instead, use the following command to boot directly into the recovery mode to then flash SuperSU to gain root.
    fastboot boot recovery.img

Your device should boot into the TWRP Recovery mode. Now follow the following steps to flash SuperSU to get root access on your OnePlus 3T.

Rooting the OnePlus 3T

1. When you enter TWRP, you’ll be asked if you’d like to allow system modifications. Swipe to the right and allow it to do that.
2. Tap on Install in the main menu of the TWRP Recovery mode.
3. Navigate to your internal storage and select No-Verify.zip to be installed on your device.
4. Tap on Swipe to Confirm Flash to flash the No-Verify file on your device.
5. Tap on Wipe.
6. Tap on Format Data on the next screen.
7. Wait for it to format the data on your device.
8. When formatting’s done, tap on Install.
9. Navigate to your internal storage and select SuperSU .zip to be installed on your device.
10. Tap on Swipe to Confirm Flash to flash SuperSU.
11. When SuperSU’s flashed, reboot your device by tapping on Reboot followed by System.

Your device should reboot and the first boot after the above root process should take a little longer than usual as the device needs to create some of the boot files which you wiped off in the above procedure.

Your newly bought OnePlus 3T now has an unlocked bootloader, a custom recovery, and root-access. You can now head to David’s how to load a custom ROM on an Android device procedure to learn how you can flash a custom ROM on your phone, and you can also check out our huge ROMs repository to see what all ROMs are available for your device.

Let us know how this worked for you!