Future Fosstek: Nexus 7 Rooted via the Nexus 7 Toolkit

Last night I did something brave. Something I swore I wouldn't do for a while after I purchased my Nexus 7. Apparently, I lied to myself. As I a little better than a month out of my ownership of my Nexus 7, and today it is rooted. This isn't a definitive walkthrough. But it will hit the high spots. And we can do it in about 4 steps that make the rooting process so easy it's almost ridiculous. Be warned, the rooting process does perform a factory reset during the process which means all of your user data and apps will be erased from the device. Please backup any information or data you may need before starting the rooting process. Read below.

Step 1: Drivers

First thing first, you need the ADB drivers for your Nexus 7. This can be accomplished one of a couple of ways. Way #1: download the Nexus 7 Toolkit and let it install the correct drivers for you. I attempted this, and it didn't work for me. I am using Windows 8, and I had read there were some funny issues about Nexus 7 driver installation under Windows 8. So I had to go to Way #2.

Way #2 is manually downloading the drivers from the ASUS site (click here). This will download the USB Driver Package to your PC. Simply unzip this file to a folder you can easily find. Then open Windows Explorer, right click Computer and click on Properties. Look for the link in the properties box that says "Device Manager". Look for an entry that had a yellow caution sign beside it that reads "Nexus 7".

Right Click the "unknown" Nexus 7 device and select to Update the driver. Follow the wizard and point it to the USB Driver that you downloaded and unzipped. This should fix the driver issue.

Step 2: USB Debugging has to be Enabled

On the Nexus 7 the "Developer Options" menu has been hidden. To access is, open the "Settings" app on your Nexus 7, tap on "About Tablet". Find "Build Number" and tap 7 times. You will see a prompt counting down how many taps until you become a "developer". This unlocks the "Developer Options Menu". Now tap your back button to return to the "Settings" menu and then tap into the "Developer Options" menu. Locate "USB Debugging" and enable it.

Step 3: Download and Install the Nexus 7 Toolkit

This is where the magic is going to happen but you have to be running this from a Windows PC with the drivers mentioned above (unless you let the toolkit install drivers for you). Visit XDA Developer's Nexus 7 section and download the Nexus 7 Toolkit. There is a lot of good information on this page, and if you have any desire to root and load custom ROMs on your device then please frequent XDA. XDA is a great community for this kind of thing. Anyways, click here to visit the thread about the Nexus 7 Toolkit and download it. Once you have downloaded it, install it. It will place a shortcut on your desktop for future use.

Step 4: Hook it all up!

Hook your Nexus 7 up to a USB Cable and your PC. Launch the newly installed Nexus 7 Toolkit. And you'll be greeted with a window that has a black background and green text asking if you want to check for an update to the toolkit (select No). Then select your build of Android (if you aren't sure go back into your Nexus 7 settings and click on "About Tablet" it will tell you Android 4.2 or 4.2.1 or other). Back in the ToolKit enter the number option that matches your version of Android. For example, mine was 4 for Android 4.2.1.

If the Toolkit see's your tablet, your tablet's serial number will be just bove the main menu. If you see it there, you're in good shape (see the pic below). I selected #8 from the menu for "1-CLICK for ALL...". Essentially, it will go through an automated process of unlocking the bootloader, rooting, renaming the recovery, installing custom recovery and busybox. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes to finish. It is prompted. So just follow the instructions as the program prompts you. The Toolkit will handle all rebooting of the Nexus 7 and installation of all software as needed during the process. So basically sit back, answer a few prompts and let it ride until it is done. Once the process is finished your Nexus 7 will reboot and the program will prompt that the rooting was successful.

If you are curious that it infact worked, download one of the many Root Checker apps from the Google Play Store and check. Now you can flash custom ROMs and run apps that require root access. One of my reasons for rooting was to use my PS3 controller for some of my tablet's games. But we'll cover that in another post.