Google

How to Root the Pixel 7 Pro

rmiles7721November 1, 2022Android

FYI, if you buy a Google Pixel 7 from the Google store enter “Z1M77NMTD8MEMZWQI7SNT87” at checkout and both of us will get $100 in Google Store credit

The Google Pixel 7 Pro is fairly easy to unlock, root and pass SafetyNet provided you have a little bit of knowledge on how to use the command line and aren’t afraid to permanently break your phone. While Pixels are relatively easy to recover if you do something wrong, there is always the potential to permanently brick your phone if you don’t know what you are doing.

You are going to need a few things before you can unlock and root. I am assuming you are doing this from Microsoft Windows (I am using Win 11 and everything works from there)

Unlocking the Bootloader

Unlocking your boot loader will factory reset your device. There is no way around this so make sure you have backed up everything. Once you unlock it I would suggest never relocking. If you do want to relock it, make sure not to do so until you have restored it to 100% stock. A couple of notes are that with Verizon branded versions, they can never unlock the bootloader. With T-Mobile and AT&T you can unlock once you’ve paid off the phone. You can contact your carrier and have them CARRIER unlock it (not the same as bootloader unlocking). Your best bet for unlocking and rooting phones in my opinion is to buy them direct-from-google or make sure that you are buying the carrier unlocked version if you are getting them from Amazon, Best Buy or some other vendor.

The steps to unlock the bootloader are:

  • Go to Android Settings – About Phone
  • Click on Build Number repeatedly, seven times
  • Go back to the main Android Settings – System – Developer Options
  • Toggle OEM Unlocking (you need to be connected to the internet)
  • Make sure you’ve unzipped the ADB/Fastboot (SDK Platform Tools) and installed the Windows USB Drivers (you will have to do this twice. Once when you first connect and again when you reboot into the bootloader.)
  • Navigate to the platform-tools folder
  • Make sure your USB cable is plugged in to your computer and to the phone.
  • Run the command “adb devices”
  • On your phone you should get an ADB prompt. Check the box to always give ADB permission and click OK
  • You should get a list of connected Android devices at that point. If not you may need to troubleshoot your drivers, make sure you only have one ADB device connected, etc..
  • Run command “adb reboot bootloader” and the phone should reboot into the android bootloader
  • Run command “fastboot flashing unlock”
  • One the phone press the volume up or down button until you see “Unlock the bootloader |>|” beside the power button.
  • Press the power button. The screen should go black for a moment and then near the bottom it will say “Device state: unlocked”
  • After this go to the steps to root your device.

Steps to Root

  • Unzip the Pixel 7 Pro Factory Image that you downloaded.
  • Copy the Magisk apk to your phone (I generally use the Downloads folder and copy all items to it.)
  • Copy the init_boot.img file from the unzipped factory image to your phone.
  • On your phone go into whatever file manager you use and install Magisk and open the app.
  • Toward the top click “install”
  • Click “Select and Patch a File” and choose the init_boot.img that you copied over from your PC.
  • Copy the modified init_boot.img (it will look something like magisk_patched-25200_1a2B3c.img) back over to your PC into the platform tools folder
  • Go back to your command prompt and run “adb reboot bootloader”
  • After it has rebooted into the bootloader (Fastboot mode), run the command “fastboot flash init_boot magisk_patched-25200_1a2B3c.img” (use whatever your file is actually called)
  • Run command “fastboot reboot”
  • Confirm that your phone reboots normally.

Congrats. Your phone is rooted. If you open Magisk it should show “Installed” and the version number.

Passing SafetyNet

If you want to use Google Pay and most banking apps as well as some games and media apps there are a few more steps you need to do.

  • Launch Magisk
  • Go to Magisk’s settings (the gear on the top right).
  • Click “Hide the Magisk app. You’ll have the chance to change the Magisk app’s name to something a little less unobtrusive such as Settings. Note that when you have it hidden or renamed you can accidentally install a new version of Magisk and neither will work at that point.
  • Go back to Magisk settings
  • Click “Systemless Hosts”. That will add a Magisk Module to Magisk, you can verify that later.
  • Toggle “Zygisk” on.
  • Toggle “Enforce DenyList” on.
  • Click “Configure DenyList”
  • Add every app that you want to deny root access and the existence of root including Google Play Store, Google Services Framework, Google Play Protect Service, Wallet, GPay, and banking apps, any streaming apps that use DRM (like Netflix), any two-factor authentication apps.
  • Reboot your phone.
  • Go back into Magisk and go to Modules at the bottom.
  • Confirm that Systemless Hosts is in the list, and enabled.
  • Install the Magisk Module Universal SafetyNet Fix that you downloaded.
  • Reboot.
  • Install from the Play Store YASNAC – SafetyNet Checker and Play Integrity API Checker.
  • Launch YASNAC and click “Run SafetyNet Attestation”. It should say: Basic Integrity: Pass., CTS profile match: Pass, Evaluation type: BASIC.
  • Launch Play Integrity API Checker and click “Check”
  • It should have green checkmarks beside MEETS_DEVICE_INTEGRITY and MEETS_BASIC_INTEGRITY.
  • It’s normal for MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY to have a red X beside it.
  • You don’t have to keep those last two apps installed unless you just want to.
  • Sometimes you will need to clear app cache AND data for apps like the Google Play Store, GPay, Wallet and others if you have opened them before all of these steps.

I’m currently using the following Magisk Modules and can cofirm they work with Android 13 on the Pixel 7 Pro (Cheetah):

If you install a Magisk module and you start bootlooping or SystemUI freezes up, restart your phone (make sure you have it connected to your PC and from the commandline run: “adb wait-for-device shell magisk –remove-modules”

That will boot you into safe mode and all your Magisk Modules will be uninstalled and you can add them back one by one to see what the issue is.

Pixel Watch – Two Weeks On

rmiles7721November 1, 2022Technology

So, I received the Pixel Watch back on October 13th and figured I would post an update on it.

I got the non-LTE version as I already have five lines on my mobile and don’t currently feel like I need the added capability that it provides. I’m never anywhere without my phone, and (I am assuming) also don’t need the extra drag on the battery that LTE would cause. I could be wrong about the battery usage, just making non-technical assumptions here.

Battery life on the pixel watch so far has been about what I expected. Not great. It does seem to charge a bit faster than my Galaxy Watch 4 Classic that I have been wearing for the last 14 months. I prefer to wear the watch at night for sleep tracking. With the Watch 4, I can get through the entire day and all night then charge before I go to work and end up somewhere around 50-75% before I leave the house. With the Pixel watch I am able to do the same, but it will be at full charge before I leave the house. I haven’t done any sort of real thorough testing but basically if I am travelling it’s an absolute must to carry a charge with me. It would be nice if someone could come out with a decent watch that would last several days between charging. The charger is also proprietary and I can’t use my Samsung charge for it (or vice versa) and weirdly enough can’t use my Pixel 7’s battery share feature to charge it either.

One thing I don’t like is that I have to use a third-party app to get all my data into Google Fit. Google chose to strictly use Fitbit for the Pixel Watch, which I guess makes sense as they own fitbit, but does that make Google Fit the red-headed stepchild now? I’m not adverse to using fitbit but I would like to use the same app for both of my watches as I am not using the Pixel exclusively. I am using FitToFit to get all of my stuff into Google Fit currently. Just one more app. I already use Health Sync to get my info from Samsung Health into Fit.

The large bezels don’t bother me as much as I was afraid they would. Google did an excellent job hiding them and as I use a black watch face they aren’t very noticeable.

As far as comfort is concerned it’s more comfortable to wear than the 4 Classic. It’s a much smaller watch than I am used to (comparison pic below) so I guess that’s part of it. The band fits nicely and there is more play (rubbery lol?) than the band that came with the Samsung Watch. I don’t even notice I am wearing it most of the time.

It’s a stylish watch and I really like it, however, it’s obvious at first glance that it’s a smart watch. Having worn watches from an early age I am used to having big old clunky things (I seem to remember having a Casio calculator watch at some point) and like big watches like the 46mm Galaxy Watch 4 Classic.

The band mechanism is neat and something I would like to see other watch makers offer, but it will never happen. Rather than use a normal watch band their bands go right up to the watch. You push a button and twist, and the band comes right off. Putting one back on is just as easy. The problem that causes is that you can’t use a regular watch band with it and Google did not release any sort of adapter. That’s only a matter of time though until someone releases one.

A couple of things I don’t like are that the Pixel Watch can’t do blood pressure (the Watch 4 can) and sleep tracking. I snore a little bit and with the Samsung it can record it for me using my phone. I am sure I could use another third-party sleep tracking app for this but that’s just one more app (and I already use 200+ as it is). There is also no automatic workout tracking either. While it will continue to monitor steps, you must go in and select when you are working out. That’s one thing I got used to and really like about the Watch 4 Classic.

I am concerned about the lack of ruggedness as well. As you can tell in the size comparison above my Watch 4 is pretty beat up. I work in the service industry and my phones and any wearables get a lot of abuse from it. The lack of raised bezels is the part that concerns me as well as a lack of water resistance. That means that as soon as I walk into one of the restaurants, I must remove my watch (if I remember) in case I end up washing dishes. I do most of my walking going through my restaurants daily and I would like to be able to track it. I have gotten it wet a few times (submersed) when I have forgotten to take it off and so far, no problems with it.

Even with the cons listed above I really like this watch and will keep on using it. The only things I have to compare both the Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch to is the Moto 360 which I wore for a couple of years until it finally died on me. Both of these are much faster and have better battery life than that one did.

Google Wifi Update

rmiles7721March 3, 2017Reviews

SO I’ve been using Google Wifi for a couple of months now and wanted to sort of update my initial review.

I picked up the Google Wifi two-pack from the Google Store back at the beginning of December. Overall I was very pleased, at least initially. Setup is easy and without getting into benchmarks or testing it’s pretty fast. Prior to using the mesh network I had two different wifi access points and an extender and still had problems getting a decent signal in some areas of my property. This seems to have been solved by switching to Google Wifi so I was pretty happy.

While the Pro’s up until the last week or so have outweighed the Cons I ran into some issues almost immediately that I have had to work around. For the most part I use static IP addresses on my network. My Home Automation PC, My CCTV server, the BBS computer, not to mention all of my IR controllers and cameras all have static IPs in the 192.168.1 range. Unfortunately Google FORCES you to use a range of 192.168.86. That’s a major problem as I’m not going to change 50+ items, batch files, python scripts, etc.

When I first installed the Wifi network I had my switches and router connected through them. I ended up having to change that so that my Internet connection goes through my router and wired switches ran the Google Wifi hubs from those. That basically means that I had to create two separate networks in the same house. A pain in the ass because I had to expand my subnet mask in order to let devices on each network “see” each other.

Once I had all that set up every seemed peachy until earlier in the week. Google apparently had some sort of issue earlier in the week that effected Google Wifi and OnHub devices and took a great deal of them offline. You aren’t able to manually specify updates, that is controlled 100% by Google. Unfortunately something they’ve done fucked up a large portion of them. There’s no way to backup network settings and people everywhere had to factory reset their hubs and add them back in. It doesn’t take long but it’s still stupid.

Since then my wifi hub that sits in the master bedroom has had to be factory reset twice more. Three times in the past week is a bit much. Every couple of days it just starts flashing red. When I did a search as to what the flashing red light means over at the Google Support site it just says

Wifi point has an issue. If your Wifi point continues to pulse red, please contact us.

What the fuck? That doesn’t sound good. Anyway, I have sent Google Support and email and hopefully will hear back from them soon.

Goodbye AT&T

rmiles7721October 21, 2016Android

Since 2005 or so I have always paid full price for my phone, but normally I purchased them from my provider. In the long run it’s much cheaper because you aren’t paying finance charges. From ’99 until maybe three years ago I was with Verizon and grandfathered in the unlimited data plan as long as I kept purchasing my phones like that. In 2013 I needed to upgrade my phone so I went into the Verizon store in Carrollton to buy a new smart phone. The salesman refused to sell me a phone and lied, telling me that even if I found a Verizon store to sell me one they would knock me out of the grandfathered plan. Of course it was a bald-faced lie at the time but I was so pissed off that I walked out, went across the street to AT&T and took all five lines and $400 a month to them.

Of course at that point I had to start paying for my data and was locked into a plan again lol. I went ahead and picked up an HTC One and used that until the Nexus 6 came out. For some reason I went ahead and decided to “upgrade” to the Nexus 6. After having to have it replaced five times I bought one unlocked from Amazon and started using that. Unfortunately that meant I was still paying for a phone I wasn’t using (which is in a box, ready for me to sell on Swappa or eBay.)

My line went month-to-month yesterday so I just finished canceling that line on the account!

Although I have had the line on AT&T I have had it forwarded to ad have been using Google’s Project Fi for the last 18 months. Maybe a little longer. While the coverage isn’t quite what my wife has I really haven’t had any problems with it and I live in a semi-rural area. I keep a pre-paid Verizon Hotspot for those times that I might not have coverage through Fi (which uses T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular towers.) My daughter has been off of AT&T and also using Project Fi for a few months now as well.

I now have three lines left on my AT&T account. One goes to month-to-month in February, one in June and one sometime in 2018. Ugh. Whar’s funny is that my bill from them will drop to somewhere around $300, maybe a little higher. I have two on Project Fi and my bill is a third of what I am paying AT&T.

Regardless of what provider anyone uses I can tell you that the nicest feeling in the world is to not be locked in to some jack-ass provider that’s holding your feet to the fire with their shitty plans. Buy your phones outright and go month-to-month. If you really want to save money shop online every month for pre-paid plans. Most of them have deals and you can switch providers. I’m not going that route since I really like Project Fi (which, knowing Google, will disappear at some point in the next few years)  but if you do, just set up a Google Voice account so you can use the same phone number for all of them. You can actually use Google Voice to ring on your mobile and landline (does anyone still have one of those?) at the same time.

Blogmeet

rmiles7721October 11, 20086Travel

I guess I’ll leave this on top for a couple of days. Directions and whatnot are down below. 

This week has crept up on me. I started my vacation this morning (Wednesday) and while I had to go into one of my stores for a bit it was a quick visit and now I’m done until next Wednesday morning. Too fucking soon if you ask me.
The reason I took my vacation this week is for two reasons. One, the kids are out of school Monday for fall break and the other, the Helen blogmeet. Yep, it’s Blogtoberfest again. Haven’t heard much carrying on about it this year. I’m looking forward to a restful weekend up in the Mountains. Heck, I don’t even know who all’s coming this time.
As in past years we are staying at the Chalet Kristy right on the banks of the Chattahoochee. It’s a blast. Most of the folks roll in Friday evening or Saturday but a couple of us I know will be up there Thursday evening. By about 6pm I should be sipping a frosty beverage at The Troll if anyone wants to get together.
Directions and some phone numbers are under the fold.

(more…)

My Take on Google Chrome

rmiles7721September 5, 20086Technology

So I decided to check out Google Chrome and downloaded it the other day to check it out. I am back to using Flock again as of this morning but I am still not happy with it.

I really liked Chrome and probably could have come to use it as my default browser. As a matter of fact I had even set it as default until last night. It is faster than Firefox, Flock and IE 7 (and 8) on my system and used quite a bit less memory. I also like the way it compartmentalizes the tabs and memory usage. If one of them became non-responsive the rest were fine and I could kill the task without crashing down the other 25 tabs that I might have open at the same timr. I was very impressed with it. Using Flock, Firefox or IE for a couple of hours and a bunch of tabs and windows open I usually have to kill the whole process after a couple of hours and forget using iTunes and actually listening to music at the same time. WIth Chrome I was able to not only listen to iTunes but keep several different windows open and working at the same time.

So why the switch back to Flock?

I spent two and a half hours working on a post last night. Several thousand words. Shadowscope was apparently offline for 40 minutes or so for some reason so the last autosave Movabletype had done missed 3/4 of the post. I wasn’t aware of it because my connection was fine. Anyway, I went to publish the entry and of course got a DNS error. When I tried to go back to the previous page most of the entry was gone. I wanted to cry. With Firefox and Flock I can spend an hour or two working on an entry and if for some reason my draft isn’t saved on the server I can go back to the posting form and most or all of it will still be there. I have even used Task Manager to kill flock and when I reopened a new browser window it has saved my entered text. That in itself is worth sticking with to me.

I don’t even mind not having access to plugins. If Google would add in saving of text entered into forms I would switch back in a heartbeat. It’s just not worth losing two frigging hours of work.

I used to use Windows Live Writer to post blog entries but it’s too damn buggy, which is why I switched back to the MT interface in the first place.

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Charter High-Speed

rmiles7721July 10, 2008Technology

I’ve been using Charter internet access ever since it became available out here in the boondocks a few years back. Prior to that I had DSL through Bellsouth. While I liked having a static IP address (which I had to pay extra for) Charter High Speed is certainly much faster than DSL ever was, at least for me.

One of the other things I liked about it is that in order to get Charter High-Speed I don’t have to have any of their other services. I do have cable of course, but they don’t force you. With DSL, the phone company said I would have to pay for a phone line in order to get DSL. What the heck is up with that? We have two cell phones here, why would I want or even need a land line?

Anyhow, they have this limited-time offer thing going on right now that I wish I were eligible for. You can get Charter High-Speed for $14.99 a month, try the first 30 days risk-free and when you sign up online you get a $25 Shell gas gift card. The 30 day risk-free thing is a 30 day window for cancellation just in case you aren’t happy with their service.

Some other benefits to being a Charter High Speed customer include:

  • Get the fastest and most reliable Internet speeds available- Get speeds up to 5Mbps to surf up to 90X faster than 56kbps dial- up and 3X as fast as 1.5Mbps DSL!

  • Automatic protection from viruses, hackers and spam – Charter High-Speed Security SuiteÆ has the fastest response to new virus threats and best virus detection.

  • 10 e-mail accounts – enough for the whole family plus 20MB of Web space.

  • Download in seconds, not minutes plus a reliable always-on, always-fast connection.

  • Exclusive content on charter.net- get your news, weather, local movie listings and more!

Go check out the web page if you get some time and see what I am talking about.

Sponsored by Charter

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ch…ch…ch…changes

rmiles7721June 21, 2008Site News

So back in May the powers that be ‘re-aligned’ our organization. I probably wrote about it a bit. I dropped two of my stores and picked up two more. No big deal. It put me working closer to home and was a bit of a raise. The only bad part is I have psycho woman working for me, but even that wasn’t too bad.

A couple of us are getting moved around again and while I’m not particularly happy about it I will be a good boy and do what I am told without too much bitching. I am losing my store in Villa Rica, GA and picking up the one in Tallapoosa, which is almost to the state line. It means probably one more tank of gas a week and considering gas prices, that’s a big deal. I guess it’s a good thing they reimburse me for all of it but it also means a pay cut for probably a month, maybe two. After that I will be OK. In addition to the new store I am also getting a new manager in one of my other ones, so it’s basically another new district. I’m interested in seeing how this progresses over the next few weeks.

I have almost finished the application for promotion. It’s not really an application as much as it is a self-assessment among other things. I will most likely have it ready to mail in by Tuesday. Once they receive it my vice president will have to sit down with me and give me an interview, at which point either he will say I am ready for promotion and put me on the list, or he’ll give me a development plan to work on and I have to go through the whole dog and pony show once again.

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Getting all my ducks in a row…

rmiles7721January 8, 2008Blogging, Parenting/Family, Travel

I have spent the great majority of the morning going between reading news sites and fooling with paperwork. Since the wife and I are going to the Bahamas next month and I don’t have a passport, while her’s expire ten years ago, there is quite a bit of stuff to do.

It takes two or three weeks to get one if you are willing to pay out the nose, which we are having to do. The first thing we had to do is get online and order our birth certificates. We got hers this weekend but I didn’t get mine until today because a signature is required and of course I am at work during the day. Fortunately I am off today and tomorrow. My first two days off in a row since December 8th. I feel it too.

I was supposed to go to the doctor today at 9:30 or so but they have moved the office and I misunderstood where the location was. Needless to say I missed my appointment. They were nice enough to reschedule it for tomorrow morning for me. That’s cool because I have some writing to do today anyway. Tomorrow I am keeping RePete home with me as she also has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon.

I have to go pick up another copy of my auto insurance policy as well. We have decided that the time has come to get new automobiles and as much as I am a fan of driving a car until the wheels fall off and hate car payments, it’s not worth the inconvenience when one of them breaks down and that will be at some point in the near future. We both take good care of our cars and have over 200k on both of them, but with my job I can’t be car-less. Since I donated the van a few months ago to the Alzheimer’s Association I don’t have an extra vehicle in case something happens with one of these.

I prefer to go through 99% of the car buying process online. Financing all the way up to finding the car. All I should have to do at the dealer is take a test drive and if I like it, drive it the hell out of there. The last car I bought was in 2000 and we ended up spending about 30 minutes in the dealership. The only reason it took that long is that I had not arranged to have it added to my insurance ahead of time. I won’t make that mistake this time. I have to stop and fax my license, insurance and references to the financing company in the morning and then I can start looking at cars. I was hoping to have everything taken care of by yesterday morning so that I could pick the car up today but no such luck. That’s OK, it will give me time for a bit of research. The wife can go get her car this weekend and I will go on my days off next week after researching a few. I still haven’t decided what I want anyway.

Traffic has been pretty heavy (for me) at the site over the last 72 hours, mainly because of the Meredith Emerson posts I put up. Somehow I have landed fairly high at Google and Yahoo! (number 2 and 4, respectively) and I have had something like 16,000 visits on those two posts alone. Several comments as well, which is nice because it means that someone is actually reading it and not just breezing through. If I could just bottle that and figure out how Google picks the top stories I would retire my happy ass tomorrow.

 

The Effects of Getting Spanked by Google…

rmiles7721November 15, 20078Technology

Updated – Just got home from several hours of meetings this evening. What an enjoyable day off 🙂

All of my sites except for this one have been dropped to PR0 now, but it’s the same for some of the bigger guys such as Techcrunch as well, so whatever Google is doing has broken some serious shit. Hopefully whatever it is will get fixed soon.

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It’s interesting to see what’s happened with some of my visits since Google decided I am an asshole.

zextreme

This is a screenshot from one of the counters I use. Historically, compared to Sitemeter, Google Analytics and AWStats ZExtreme only seems to record about half of my actual visits, so the numbers themselves should be doubled but it should give you an idea of what I am talking about. I suppose since I have paid links links and don’t use the nofollow tag like they think I should, I have been bumped like 50 places on any and all searches that might bring people here. Joke ’em if they can’t take a fuck. The only searches they seem to let through are from images.Google.com and I am getting ready to block that shit.

I am torn about the whole thing anyway. Has the content gotten worse? No, not necessarily. I still post the same old crap except that I think maybe it’s improved slightly. I post more often and write longer. I am getting like ten times the amount of comments than I was prior to that, and THAT’s what blogging is all about for me anyway. The participation and communication between people.

The only part of the whole thing that sucks is that it DOES effect my income and I don’t like the fact that Google is basically telling us that the only relevant paid links or searches are those which IT performs and if all your base don’t belong to Google, then you are dogshit. So am I taking down my Google AdSense advertisements on the sidebar? Nope, they are still performing, although slowly. I am considering giving in though and adding nofollow back into all of the links that I can.

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