## Samsung #### Note: This guide is ONLY for Samsung devices launched with Android Pie (9.0) pre-installed, which currently includes the S10 series and A50. If you have an older device, please follow the general installation guide. Your device must also have an unlockable bootloader, which means in practice that all Exynos devices are supported, whilst those manufactured for the Northern American market (with Snapdragon SOCs), are not. ### Before Installing Magisk - Installing Magisk **WILL** trip KNOX - Installing Magisk for the first time **REQUIRES** a full data wipe, backup before continue - You have to have your bootloader unlocked before following the instructions - Magisk has to be installed to the **recovery** partition of your device, which is **very** different from what you used to know about rooting in general ### Unlocking Bootloader Normally I won't provide instructions for this, but since things had changed drastically from previous Samsung devices, and there are some details that many might not know, I figure this would be helpful. - Allow bootloader unlocking in Developer options → OEM unlocking - Power off your device. Press *Bixby + Volume Down* and plug in your device to a PC to boot into download mode - Long press volume up to unlock the bootloader. **This will wipe your data and automatically reboot.** Just when you think the bootloader is unlocked, surprise surprise, it is *actually* not! Samsung introduced `VaultKeeper` in the system, meaning the bootloader will reject any unofficial partitions before `VaultKeeper` explicitly allows it. - Go through the initial setup. Skip through all the steps since data will be wiped again later when we are installing Magisk. **Connect the device to internet in the setup though!** - Enable developer options, and **confirm that the OEM unlocking option exists and grayed out!** The `VaultKeeper` service will unleash the bootloader after it confirms that the user has the OEM unlocking option enabled. This step is to simply make sure the service gets the correct info, and also double check that our device is in a correct state - Your bootloader now accepts unofficial images in download mode, a.k.a actual bootloader unlocked :D. Follow on to read the rest of this guide. ### Magisk in Recovery Because the recovery part is confusing, let me explain it in more detail. To boot to a system with Magisk, you will have to **boot to recovery every time**. Because both Magisk and recovery lives in the same partition, what you end up when booting into recovery will be determined by **how long you press volume up**. After installing Magisk to the recovery partition, when you choose to boot to recovery, by default it will boot to the system with Magisk enabled. If you want to actually boot to recovery and not Magisk, continue holding the volume up button until you see the recovery screen. This might sound confusing but please keep following along. After you unlock the bootloader, every time the device powers on, you will see the following splash screen:
The bootloader decides where to boot before the warning splash screen, either it be `system`, `recovery` or `download`. This means you actually only need to hold the *Bixby + Volume Up* button combo till you see the splash screen if you want to boot to the recovery partition. **All words in summary, after installing Magisk:** - **(Powering up normally) → (System with no Magisk)** - **(Power + Bixby + Volume Up) → (Bootloader warning) → (Release all buttons) → (System with Magisk)** - **(Power + Bixby + Volume Up) → (Bootloader warning) → (Keep holding volume up) → (Actual recovery)** ### Instructions Now after reading all the info above, here are the instructions: 1. Download the firmware for your device. 2. Unzip the firmware and copy the **AP** tar file to your device. It is normally named as `AP_[device_model_sw_ver].tar.md5` 3. Install Magisk Manager from the [Canary Channel](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/topjohnwu/magisk_files/master/canary_builds/app-release.apk) 4. In Magisk Manager: Install → Install → Select and Patch a File 5. Select the **AP** tar file. Magisk Manager will patch the whole firmware file and store the output to `[Internal Storage]/Download/magisk_patched.tar` 6. Copy the tar file to your PC, and boot your device to download mode. 7. Flash `magisk_patched.tar` as AP in ODIN