Once you’ve finalized the set of instructions, hit the “Flash” button. If you tell the update to go ahead and install, it will likely fail since you’re running a rooted device. When you get notified that there’s an update available for your device, the first thing you’ll want to do is go ahead and download it- but don’t install it. How to Use FlashFire to Flash an OTA Update, Without Losing Root

When you’re ready, you can install FlashFire from the Play Store. If you want to learn more I encourage anyone interested to check this thread on XDA before getting started. So: while FlashFire isn’t guaranteed to work on every device, if you’ve gone the “official” route to root your phone, it will probably work. If you’ve unlocked the bootloader, however, FlashFire should be able to preserve (or at least reinstate) root access once the update is finished. Since there’s no way to root Marshmallow without an unlocked bootloader, you’ll completely lose root access if your device’s bootloader is locked. If you can’t get the OTA file, you may be out of luck.įurthermore, if you’re running a rooted device that’s getting a full version update-from Lollipop to Marshmallow, for example-things get murkier. On other devices, it will not actually download, so you’d have to get the OTA file some other way (they are often posted on sites like XDA Developers), and then maybe you can flash it with a tool like FlashFire. On some devices it will actually download, but you would need a tool like FlashFire to successfully flash it.

On many devices, having root will prevent OTAs from downloading and flashing.

Theoretically, it should work on many, if not most, Android 4.2+ handsets. RELATED: How to Root Your Android Phone with SuperSU and TWRP It effectively eliminates the need to use recovery to manually backup or restore, and automatically handles un-rooting and re-rooting when flashing update files. What Is FlashFire?įlashFire is powerful tool from Chainfire, the maker of SuperSU, that allows rooted users to perform a variety of actions, like flashing OTA updates and full zip files, create and restore backups, wipe data, and much more. Once upon a time, SuperSU had an “Survival Mode” that would let you flash updates, but that’s no longer around. And if you have a custom recovery, the OTA update may not be able to install itself at all. On Lollipop and earlier versions of Android, the over-the-air (OTA) update sets your Android system partition back to its factory state, removing the su binary. On newer devices with systemless root, it overwrites the boot image. You’ll usually lose your root access when you install an operating system update.

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