There are many reasons you lot might want to revert your rooted telephone dorsum to stock Android. Selling it or making a warranty merits are the biggest. Just you likewise need to do it if y'all want to install a organization update. Or possibly you've installed then many tweaks and mods that you lot merely desire to become dorsum to some semblance of normality.

In this guide, we'll take a wait at the iii master ways to get back to stock Android. Whether that means going fully unrooted with a locked bootloader or just reverting to the stock ROM simply keeping root access, you'll find an selection that works for you.

1. Restore a Nandroid Backup

The quickest manner to revert your phone back to its stock ROM is to restore your Nandroid backup. Assuming you lot have an up-to-engagement one available, this shouldn't result in much—or any—information loss.

A Nandroid backup is a total system fill-in created in the recovery. You lot should create ane every time you flash a new ROM or install any kind of mod. It's the outset tool you should use if you always need to unbrick your phone.

A Nandroid fill-in creates a consummate snapshot of your phone: the operating organisation, apps, information, and everything else. Restoring it, therefore, restores the ROM you lot were using at the fourth dimension. If you have a backup you took when using the stock ROM, and so yous're fix.

That said, using a Nandroid backup to return to stock is only a brusk-term option. The fill-in will restore your sometime apps and data, meaning that apps you've uninstalled volition reappear, and text messages you've since received will disappear. If your Nandroid backup is more than a day or ii old, you might want to keep it for emergencies simply.

How to Restore a Nandroid Fill-in

Thankfully, the steps to restoring a Nandroid backup are relatively straightforward:

  1. Boot your phone into your custom recovery. We recommend TWRP.
  2. Select Restore. You'll see a list of all the available backups.
  3. Pick a backup made using the stock ROM.
  4. Select the partitions you want to restore. Normally, this means you should check all the boxes.
  5. Finally, swipe the bar labeled Swipe to Restore. Information technology takes a few minutes to complete, and so you lot tin reboot.

That gets you lot back to your stock ROM. To go the whole mode, you lot demand to unroot your telephone as well.

How to practice this depends on what app you used when rooting. If yous used SuperSU, for example, go to the Settings tab, select Full Unroot, and then reboot your phone once more. It volition now be unrooted.

Finally, you might want to relock your bootloader besides. How you do this will vary between devices. The well-nigh common method is to apply Fastboot with the command fastboot oem lock or fastboot flashing lock.

Re-locking the bootloader wipes your device entirely. You should only practice it if you absolutely need to, similar if you're sending your phone for a warranty repair or selling it.

2. Flash a Stock ROM

If restoring a Nandroid fill-in isn't a viable selection, then your next best bet is to flash a stock ROM. This comes with the added inconvenience that you will probably demand to perform a manufactory reset along the manner, so will need to go through the process of backing up and restoring your Android information.

There are benefits of going from a custom ROM to a stock ROM, besides. You lot might exist able to observe a pre-rooted version of the ROM. Flashing ROMs is besides really easy to practice.

The biggest obstacle to using a ROM to revert to stock is that y'all're relying on someone else to create the ROM for you. If you have a popular phone with an agile community on the XDA Developers forums, then this won't be a problem. If you ain a lesser-known device, a stock ROM may exist harder to find.

xda stock roms

The exception is if you own a OnePlus device. In this case, yous tin download a flashable stock ROM directly from the OnePlus website.

oneplus stock rom

How to Flash a Stock ROM

Our guide to installing a custom ROM gives y'all all info you need. For a quick refresher, here are the steps:

  1. Discover a stock ROM for your phone. Become to the XDA Developers forums and locate the forum for your device. Stock ROMs are ofttimes found in stickied posts at the top of the development boards.
  2. Download the ROM to your phone.
  3. Back up all your information.
  4. Boot into recovery.
  5. Select Wipe to factory reset your phone. This is optional (if you lot don't want to bother with backing up and restoring), but you may come across bugs or fifty-fifty get stuck in a bootloop if you lot don't do it. Swipe the bar to begin the wipe.
  6. From the recovery home screen, select Install and navigate your mode to the stock ROM you downloaded.
  7. Swipe the bar to begin installation. You can reboot your phone when it's finished.

If you lot downloaded a pre-rooted stock ROM and want to keep it that mode, you're now good to go. If you used a non-rooted ROM and want to get back fully to stock, all you demand to practice at present is re-lock the bootloader. Remember that this volition wipe your phone.

3. Flash a Manufactory Image

The ultimate method for getting your phone back to stock is to flash a manufacturing plant image. This reverts your phone almost to the country it was in when you beginning unboxed it. All you need to do afterward is lock the bootloader, and your device will be completely factory fresh.

Mill images come directly from the device manufacturers, and many don't release them. Google and Motorola are among the major companies that do. It's normally possible to go mill images from Samsung and LG, but y'all may demand to download them from third-party sites.

pixel factory images

And where they are available, they're likewise more hard to install than either of the other methods we've outlined. Some require a manual approach using the ADB and Fastboot tools with the command line. Some, like Samsung or HTC, utilize their own software.

Despite the obstacles, flashing a factory image is the best option if you ever need to completely reset your device. It tin also serve as the nuclear selection if you lot've bricked your device and no other methods to gear up it are working.

How to Flash a Mill Paradigm

The procedure to flash a manufacturing plant epitome tin differ from ane device to another. In the instance of a Pixel, the steps are elementary:

  1. Download and prepare the ADB and Fastboot tools.
  2. Download the manufacturing plant image from the Android website. Unzip the download on your desktop.
  3. Connect your telephone via USB and boot into Fastboot mode.
  4. Launch the Control Prompt or Terminal app.
  5. At the control prompt, run flash-all.bat on Windows, or wink-all.sh on macOS or Linux.
  6. Wait for it to stop, and then reboot.

That volition take you to a stock, unrooted ROM, with stock recovery as well. Lock the bootloader, and you'll be completely back to normal.

Other phones might take different instructions. Y'all'll usually find them outlined on the same site where you downloaded the images from. Just think that in most cases, flashing a mill image will completely wipe your telephone.

Reinstall the Stock Firmware

Getting back to stock uses the same techniques used to install ROMs and mods in the kickoff identify. If you're accustomed to working with a rooted phone, there should be nothing in this guide that's peculiar or alarming.

Once you've downloaded the original software or institute an appropriate backup of your own, the process should take no more than a few minutes.

Remember that running the stock firmware for your phone is not the same every bit running stock Android itself—it still includes the pare, apps, and other tweaks your telephone'due south manufacturer has added. At that place are some benefits to running stock Android itself, however, that are well worth exploring.

What Is Stock Android? 5 Reasons to Utilize It on Your Next Telephone

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About The Author

Andy Betts (215 Articles Published)

Andy is a freelance writer and junior editor for Android at MUO. He's been writing about consumer tech since the early 2000s for a wide range of publications, and has a passion for all things mobile.

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