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Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

Times like this are why it would be really nice for google to allow a root shell for developers when booted in recovery mode or something. Trying to fix this from userspace in the short window you have before the systemui crashes... what a silly avoidable nightmare.

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You can root your phone, but then you lose SafetyNet which means that things like banking apps, etc. won't work. For "normal" developer access there's adb which does have some special privileges (nowhere close to actual root, but better than nothing), but using it to change screen background settings would be quite clunky. Even using the adb shell to delete the file would run into restrictions on general storage access that newer Androids have.

Magisk has an option to force enable passing SafetyNet, plus hide Magisk. If you combine those you can have root and still run banking apps and Google Pay like normal.

https://www.didgeridoohan.com/magisk/MagiskHideSafetyNet

Magisk Hide is an unreliable workaround, since remote attestation of the running OS could be required at any time to pass SafetyNet. Even the author of Magisk Hide is well aware of this.

Could you explain that more, I didn't understand your response

See this tweet chain from the Magisk author. It seems Google might enable remote attestation at some point like they did for a short period during this tweet, defeating MagiskHide.

https://twitter.com/topjohnwu/status/1245956080779198464?s=1...

I think that depends on the phone and the root application used. My HTC is rooted with magisk and it claims SafetyNet is still in operation. I don't use my phone for much banking, but I've never seen any issues.

To me adb was the last resort to make an old tablet of mine useable. That little bastard resisted all rooting attempts, and was filled with branded junk which made it slower than a dead sloth; luckily adb allowed me to remove a ton of "system" rubbish.

If you attach adb and run "stop" before SystemUI starts, it will shut down everything and let you play around in the shell as long as you want.

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