How to Install TWRP on the OnePlus 6 with Android 9.0 Pie

My previous tutorial about how to install TWRP on the OnePlus 6 is no longer working with the latest official version of TWRP and OxygenOS that is on Android 9.0 Pie. This could change in the future but for now, there is a way to get it working so you can use this workaround.

I’m not sure what the real issue is, but official versions of TWRP tend to always have some sort of conflict with OnePlus devices. Things may work at first but then something change and it’s up to the developer community to pick up the slack if they want to continue using their phone how they want to.

This is Why More People Should Donate

There’s a lot of work that goes into making things like TWRP, Magisk, Xposed Framework, and other Android modifications working on older and newer devices. Community developers are typically stuck doing thankless jobs and more often than not it is done in their spare time.

Very few Android developers in the modding scene can make a living doing what they do. The few who do are generally branching out and making applications that offer an in-app purchase to unlock additional content. I doubt any of them are actually paying bills and living on their own thanks to donations alone.

Even the smallest donations matter so if you’re able to toss a dollar or two here or there to those developers who help to enhance the smartphone or tablet you spent $100+ on, then please so do. If you can’t, encouraging others and/or sharing their work through social media helps too cause eventually it’ll reach people who can donate.

Official TWRP Boots the OnePlus 6 on Pie to a Qualcomm Crashdump Mode

So I recently updated my OnePlus 6 to Android 9.0 Pie which left me with the stock OnePlus recovery mode and no root access to my smartphone. My custom kernel was wiped out, my root applications couldn’t work (Substratum being my most important one).

So, I have built up a respectable repository of tutorials here so naturally I went to the guide I wrote about how to install TWRP on the OnePlus 6. I often refer back to my own written tutorials as it’s easier for me to use those to find the links and the commands I am looking for.

I downloaded the latest version of TWRP, copied the TWRP ZIP file over to the smartphone and then booted the OnePlus 6 into Fastboot Mode. I followed the Fastboot boot command that we use to temporarily boot TWRP to smartphones with a/b partitions and things didn’t go as planned.

How to Get the OnePlus 6 Out of Qualcomm’s Crashdump Mode

As soon as I pressed enter on the keyboard I saw the OnePlus Fastboot logo appear and then it went away before I was presented with a Qualcomm Crashdump Mode screen. This isn’t something that I’m used to seeing so I was starting to get paranoid that I had bricked the phone.

Thankfully, all I had to do was unplug the USB cable from the OnePlus 6 followed by pressing and holding the Power button for 10-15 seconds. The OnePlus 6 ended up rebooting and took me right back into OxygenOS without anything messed up.

So it was obvious that there were some incompatibility issues with the official release of TWRP and the OnePlus 6. I wish I could say this is rare but I am have come across this with the OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T and now the OnePlus 6. There always seems to be one developer who saves the day though and they are known as eng.stk on the XDA forum.

So let me show you how I got through all of this and got TWRP, Magisk, and Substratum working on my newly updated OnePlus 6. This tutorial will be coving the process from start to finish, so if you have already done some parts (including unlocking the bootloader), then just skip to the step you need to be at.

This Works as of Right Now, But Could Change in the Future

Just like how my original tutorial about installing TWRP on the OnePlus 6 doesn’t work with this new version of OxygenOS (that is based on Android Pie), this tutorial may not work in the future. 

In fact, the original tutorial I wrote about how to install TWRP on the OnePlus 6 may end up working again if the maintainer recognizes the issue and fixes it in a future update. The developer community can help us to do a lot of amazing things without smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches.

However, the Android ecosystem is an ever changing system and one simple change (like an update to Pie, or an update to TWRP) could throw the whole thing out of whack.

Don’t forget the amount of work and effort these developers put into mods that we take for granted

I was recently unable to update my OnePlus 5T to the latest version of LineageOS due to a missing/unmountable vendor partition. When I had first installed LOS on the phone there wasn’t a vendor partition so it didn’t matter.

But then OnePlus updated the smartphone and added it so it was added to LineageOS to keep up with the times. I had to go through an entire process of flashing a new radio to the device and then installing the latest version of the Mokee custom ROM just to get a vendor partition.

It wasn’t until that happened that I was able to then install the latest version of OxygenOS (which will likely be replaced with LineageOS in the near future). So just remember, the work these developers do is hard enough the first time around.

Then the proverbial wrench gets thrown into the works and the community either blames the developer or expects (and sometimes demands) that they fix it.

So again, go out and thank the developers who create the mods you use. Donate to them if you can and/or share their work with as many people as you can.