How To Install A Custom Recovery To An Android Phone / Device

A custom recovery lets you perform several advanced operations on your Android device and we have covered it before in some of our guides but now, we will be detailing several available methods that you can use to flash a custom recovery to your phone.

UPDATE: While this guide will still be our primary guide on how to install ClockworkMod recovery using several methods, we have written another one that takes you on a complete, in-depth feature tour of ClockworkMod recovery and explains every single options that the recovery has to offer, in detail. Check it out at what is ClockworkMod recovery and how to use it on Android (Complete Guide).

A recovery image is the system level software for your Android device that lets you perform several maintenance and recovery tasks. The stock recovery image is quite limited in what it allows you to do and therefore, flashing a custom recovery image is requiredto gain full control of your device’s administration. A custom recovery image allows you to perform the following tasks:

• Wipe your phone’s data (Factory reset) and cache,
• Make, restore and manage backups of your phone’s operating system and sotware.
• Mount, unmount and format your phone’s internal as well as external storage partitions.
• Install a custom ROM or application from a zip file to your phone,
• Wipe Dalvik cache and battery statistics, and
• Make logs for error reporting and debugging.

While there may be several custom recoveries available for most Android devices, the most popular ones are the ClockworkMod Recovery (also called Clockwork Recovery) and the Amon_RA recovery. We use ClockworkMod Recovery as it is available for and works on almost all popular Android devices. However, if you are using another custom recovery such as Amon_RA, you can still perform all or most of these operations from it. The text and order of the recovery menu options might differ in other recoveries.

Before You Begin

To be able to install a custom recovery to your device, it must be rooted. We have written an extensive guide on how to root your Android phone that you can use. Once your phone has been rooted, you may proceed with the installation of a custom recovery image to it.

Furthermore, if you have an HTC HD2, a Samsung Galaxy S I9000 or a Samsung Continuum, see these guides instead:

How to install ClockworkMod recovery on HTC HD2 with MAGLDR.
How to install ClockworkMod recovery on Samsung Galaxy S I9000.
How to install ClockworkMod recovery on Samsung Continuum.

Installing the Recovery

There are primarily three methods of installing a custom recovery to your phone. Please note that the first method is specific to ClockworkMod recovery only while the other two methods can be used for any custom recovery supported by your phone.

1. Using ROM Manager
2. Using Fastboot
3. Using flash_image

Now let us review each of these methods in detail.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be liable if your device gets damaged or bricked during the process.

With ROM Manager:

This is the easiest method available and lets you begin the installation using a graphical interface while you are booted into Android, thus you do not have to download the recovery image and enter any commands. This is the recommended method for most users and you should try other methods only if this one doesn’t work for you at all for some reason.

1. Launch Android Market on your phone and use it to find and install our previously featured ‘ROM Manager’. It is an app that basically lets you schedule recovery operations while booted into Android, and has an option for installing the latest version of ClockworkMod Recovery.
2. Launch the just installed ‘Rom Manager’ on your phone. The first option it gives you should say ‘Flash ClockworkMod Recovery’. Just tap on it and follow the instructions.
3. Wait patiently while the system reboots and the latest version of ClockworkMod Recovery is installed. Select to reboot the device if it prompts you to.
4. Once the device reboots into Android, verify that you have the latest version of ClockworkMod Recovery installed by launching Rom Manager. It should now mention in the first option that you have ClockworkMod installed along with its version you’re running, and any updates that might be available. If a newer version is available, tap on that option and follow the instructions to update.

With Fastboot:

If for some reason the ROM Manager method does not work for you, you can manually install the recovery using fastboot. For this method to work, you must have ADB and fastboot installed on your computer. If you don’t, you can refer to our guide on what is ADB and how to install it. Once you have ADB setup on your computer, you can proceed as follows to install a custom recovery:

WARNING: It is very important that the recovery image that you use in this method is compatible with your device. Else it will not work and flashing it could possibly mess up your device.

1. Copy the recovery image to a convenient location on your computer, preferably with a short path. We will be placing it on the C Drive directly (not in any folder) and using that in the next steps.
   Note: The recovery image should have .img extension. If it is in a zip file, extract the .img file from it.
2. Power your device off and reboot it in fastboot mode. The button combination required for this will be different for each device and you can find it by doing an online search for “how to boot device_name in fastboot”, replacing device_name with the name of your device.
3. Connect your device to your computer via USB and wait till you see ‘fastboot USB’ on the screen.
4. Launch Command Prompt and type the following command:

   fastboot flash recovery c:\recovery.img

   Note that we have used c:\recovery.img as we the image extracted at the root of our C drive and renamed it to recovery.img. If you extracted the file elsewhere, use the appropriate path and if your recovery image has a different name, use the appropriate name or rename it to recovery.img first.

5. Wait for the process to finish and reboot your device once it’s done.

With flash_image:

Just like the previous method, this method also requires following advanced steps and is not recommended if the first method is working for you. flash_image is a tool for Android devices that lets you rewrite your phone’s system partitions with partition image files and installing it to your device requires ADB. If you don’t already have ADB installed, check out our guide on what is ADB and how to install it. Once you have ADB installed, flash the custom recovery image as follows:

WARNING: It is very important that the recovery image that you use in this method is compatible with your device. Else it will not work and flashing it could possibly brick your device.

1. Download flash_image and extract it from the zip file to a location on your computer. We extracted it to the main C drive (not in any folder) and will use that in the next steps.
2. Copy the recovery image for your phone to a convenient location on your computer, preferably with a short path. We will be placing it on the C Drive directly (not in any folder) and using that in the next steps.
   Note: The recovery image should have .img extension. If it is in a zip file, extract the .img file from it.
3. Enable USB debugging mode on your device from Menu > Settings > Applications > Development.
4. Connect your device to your computer via USB.
5. Open a Command Prompt window on your computer and enter the following commands:

   adb push c:\flash_image /sdcard/
   adb push c:\recovery.img /sdcard/
   adb shell
   su
   mount -o remount, rw /system
   cp /sdcard/flash_image /system/bin
   cd /system/bin
   chmod 777 flash_image
   flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img

   This will first transfer flash_image and recovery.img to your phone. Then it will copy flash_image to the /system/bin folder of your Android device and make it executable. Finally, it will flash the custom recovery image to your device using flash_image.
   Note that we used c:\flash_image and c:\recovery.img in the first two lines as we had these files extracted at the root of our C drive. If you extracted the files elsewhere, use the appropriate paths and if your recovery image has a different name, use the appropriate name.

6. Reboot your device once the process is finished and you’re done. You may exit adb and the Command Prompt window on your computer by entering ‘exit’ thrice.

Bonus: Install Recovery Without SD Card

You can use the flash_image method along with some additional adb commands to flash a recovery without even using an SD card. We have written a dedicated guide on it that you can find here: How to flash a custom recovery to an Android device without SD card.

Booting Into Recovery

Now that you have the custom recovery installed, you should verify that it has been installed successfully by booting your device into recovery. You will also need to boot into recovery if you want to manually perform any of the recovery operations later.

If you installed the recovery using ROM Manager and are currently booted into Android, just launch ROM Manager on your device and tap ‘Reboot into Recovery’. With ROM Manager, it is also easier to just schedule the recovery operations from the GUI to be performed automatically, rather than rebooting manually into recovery and performing them from there. You can learn more in our guide on Android ROM Manager.

If you have used any of the other methods to install the custom recovery or can’t boot Android to be able to use ROM Manager and use it to reboot into recovery, you can use the manual method for booting your device into recovery.

If any of these methods don’t work for you, check out our ClockworkMod recovery section for guides on several other devices including most tablets.

That’s about it – you should now have a custom recovery installed on your Android device. Know of another method? Let us know in the comments.