How to Disable Forced Encryption on the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T

If for some reason you want to disable the forced encryption on the OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 3T, you can follow these steps to do just that.

A couple of years ago, there were multiple reasons why someone would want to disable the forced encryption that some OEMs were applying to their devices. Naturally, having your personal data is encrypted if you want to keep it safe from prying eyes, but this does come with some drawbacks.

At least a few years ago, even flagship Android smartphones were actually losing performance because the OEM was forcing their data to be encrypted.

It’s not even like there was a simple toggle that the person could switch off either. Thankfully, has hardware has improved, having forced encryption on our devices does not negatively impact the performance of our devices (other than a few seconds slower on the boot time). However, having forced encryption on our devices does prevent us from installing certain root modifications (like MultiROM) so there are still some people out there who want to disable it.

So, for those who want to install something that requires us to disable forced encryption on the OnePlus 3 (or you just don’t want it forced on you in the first place), you can follow these steps below. To start though, you will have to unlock the bootloader of the OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 3T, and you also need install TWRP on the OnePlus 3 or the OnePlus 3T.

Note – You will lose all of your data (including stuff in the internal storage) by performing the following steps.

Disable Force Encryption on the OnePlus 3

1. Download SuperSU v2.79 on your PC
2. Type the following into the Command Prompt. .
3. adb devices
4. . . .then press the Enter button on the keyboard
5. Boot the OnePlus 3 into Fastboot Mode
6. Connect the OnePlus 3 to the PC with a USB cable
7. Type the following command into the Command Prompt. . .
8. fastboot format userdata
9. . . .then press the Enter button on the keyboard
10. Wait for the format to be completed
11. Then press the Volume Down button twice on the OnePlus 3
12. Press the Power button once the Recovery Mode option is highlighted
13. Wait for the OnePlus 3 to boot into TWRP
14. Copy/move the SuperSU .ZIP file to the OnePlus 3
15. Tap on the Install button within TWRP
16. Browse to and tap on the SuperSU .ZIP file you just put on there
17. Swipe the white arrows to the right to confirm the installation
18. Wait for SuperSU to be installed
19. Then press the Reboot System button to reboot the OnePlus 3

Explanation

Unless you need to install something that requires forced encryption to be disabled, then you likely don’t need to do any of this. It’s not something I recommend the majority of OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T owners to do because there simply isn’t enough benefit to it. As mentioned, disabling forced encryption will improve the boot time of your device by a few seconds, but the other performance numbers barely show any improvement at all.

So unless you want to install MultiROM or something, you likely don’t have any need to disable forced encryption at all. For those who want to continue though, be aware that all of your data will be wiped (and this includes stuff in your internal storage folder). This is why we need to download SuperSU to the PC first, and then move/copy it to the phone because it will be erased if we download it to the phone first. After you have SuperSU downloaded, and booted into Fastboot Mode, you can then turn your attention to the Command Prompt.

There isn’t an easy to disable forced encryption on the OnePlus 3 without erasing your data, so once you execute that Fastboot format command then know your data is gone. It should only take a few seconds to complete this format. If everything goes according to plan, you should get a few OKAY responses in the Command Prompt. From here, you need to make sure you don’t boot back up into Android just yet. Doing so will enable forced encryption again.

Instead, we need to press the Volume Down button a couple of a times to highlight the Recovery Mode option (in Fastboot Mode). Press the Power button and this will boot us into TWRP so that we can install SuperSU. Follow the steps in the guide to install SuperSU and then you can tap on the Reboot System button to boot back into Android. We need to install this specific version of SuperSU because it is not systemless, and because it makes changes to the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T that tells it to not enable forced encryption.

Installing SuperSU doesn’t disable forced encryption on its own (which is why we needed to format userdata in the first place), but it tells the Android OS to not force it if it isn’t already forced. Once you are back into Android, you can set your stuff up like normal and then check the bottom of the Settings -> Security section to see if you see the word Encrypted under the Encrypt Phone option. If the word Encrypted is not there, then your OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 3T is not encrypted.