Pixel is the new brand of Google smartphones that are replacing the current Nexus as high-tech smartphones. Like most smartphones on the market, Google allows you to unlock the bootloader of your Pixel devices so that if you want, users can have full control of the device (in exchange for the security loss that includes opening the bootloader) and, for example, we can install a custom recovery or change Android rom for a custom one.
The process of releasing a Google Pixel bootloader is very simple and the requirements that you need to unlock a Google Pixel bootloader are only the smartphone (obviously), a Windows, MacOS or Linux computer, and a USB cable.
Then, we will look at the device unlocking step by step.
ALSO READ : How To Root Google Pixel And Google Pixel XL
Guide To Unlock Bootloader Of Google Pixel And Google Pixel XL
The first thing we need to do to unlock is to prepare our computer by installing our adb and fastboot drivers.
The next thing you need to do is to enable development options and turn on OEM Unlocking, one of the security measures of modern smartphones. To do this, we open our Android setup menu, go to the “for the phone” section, and then tap 7 times in the “Build number” row.
When the programmer’s features are on, we just look for the “Unlock OEM” option and turn it on. It is also recommended, if not, to activate the USB debugging.
After all of this, we turn off our smartphone and restart it in “boot mode”. To do this, when the Pixel is off, press the “volume + Power” buttons and in a few seconds we will see the Bootloader function similar to the following.
We connect the USB cable into the computer and wait for the phone to be installed.
As soon as Google Pixel is connected to your computer in Bootloader mode, all you need to do to unlock the Google Pixel bootloader is to run the fastboot commands necessary to unlock the bootloader.
For this, from the CMD window (or the terminal according to our operating system) where we have all the ADB files (see Related Articles for Download) we will type the “Fastboot Devices” command and if Google Pixel appears on list Then we will run:
fastboot flashing unlock
Then a padlock screen will appear in our pixel and will ask us if we really want to proceed on by unlocking the bootloader.
You select “Yes” with the “power” button, taking into account that we can lose the guarranty and after a few seconds the device will restart, delete all of our data and restart at factory valuesbut having the bootloader unlocked and giving us the necessary permits to do what we want.
We must keep in mind before unlocking a Google Pixel bootloader that some apps such as Android Pay or Pokemon Go may stop working if they detect devices with the bootloader unlocked.