How to unlock and root the Motorola Nexus 6 (the easy way)

So you've got yourself a Nexus 6 and want to play around with custom ROMs a little bit. Although we don't see why you'd want to give up on the seamlessly smooth Android 5.0 experience, it's never a bad idea to tweak around your smartphone in order to flash custom ROMs or gain access to some root only applications. Today we'll show you how to unlock the bootloader and root your Nexus 6 without all the hassle of sideloading files or apks.

Unlocking the Bootloader

This is the first step in getting your Nexus 6 open to flashing custom ROMs. Nexus devices come with unlockable bootloaders by default, but it still takes some work to unlock your device. Luckily, since you own a Nexus 6, this shouldn't be much of a concern thanks to Nexus Root Toolkit by wugfresh, which can be found here. Follow the steps for more:

Beyond the installation of the latest version of the Nexus Root Toolkit, it's as easy as selecting your Nexus device from the list and letting the app do the rest. Nexus Root Toolkit might ask you to download file dependencies along with the TWRP recovery and the boot.img. Just make sure you download them all before going ahead with the process.

Up next, the app will ask you to enable USB debugging on the smartphone. Also, you might be required to uncheck the MTP option from the USB settings page. These can be done by following the steps above.

Once done, you will simply have to select from the myriad of options available as you can see in the screenshot above. Options include backing up your device, restoring it, and of course unlocking your Nexus smartphone.

Bear in mind that unlocking the smartphone will wipe all the data from your device, so it is imperative that you have all your data backed up before proceeding.

Rooting the Nexus 6

Now that you've unlocked your beloved Nexus 6, rooting shouldn't be all that hard. You can even select to flash a custom recovery along with rooting, which saves you the trouble of manually downloading it later. The recovery used here will be TWRP.

Once you've hit the root button, you will see the popup above. Tap ‘OK' and the app will start pushing root files and even flash the custom recovery for you. Remember that the device might boot multiple times during the process, so it's completely normal.

When the process is complete you will get a message telling you that the root is successful. Don't unplug your device until you see the success message. You will then have to manually open and install BusyBox which can be found in the app drawer. The rest of the steps are pretty straight forward and you will have yourself a rooted Nexus 6 in a matter of few minutes.

Have you tried out this root tool yet? Let us know what you think.