Rooting Android Emulator

Requirements:

• Android Studio Installed

• An Android Emulator running (for this tutorial version 5.1 -API 21-)

• SuperSU Mobile app (chainfire)

  • Google Play Store

  • Direct Download (called SuperSU APK)

• Recovery flashable.zip

  • Direct Download (called SuperSU ZIP)

  • Alternative backup provided by XDA user Ibuprophen

Instructions

Install the SuperSu.apk

• Install the SuperSu app firstly.

  • You can do it from the device from Google Play Store, or

  • Sideload through adb i.e adb -e install supersu.apk

• After installing it, when you run it shows a screen as shown below indicating "There is no SU binary installed..". This error just confirms the device is not yet rooted.

Make emulator’ system partition writable

• As it suggests, we need to give the emulator permission to write system files.

• List the emulators installed on your PC emulator -list-avds

Emulator list

• Navigate to the tools folder where Android SDK is installed and open command prompt there.

  • On Mac OS: ~/Library/Android/sdk/emulator

• Type the following code to accomplish this: emulator -avd {emulator_name} -writable-system

Pushing su binary in system directory

• Extract the Recovery flashable.zip (containing the su binaries of different architectures)

Important! Only use the su binary that matches your AVD architecture e.g x86, arm etc.., and note the path where you extracted these binaries.

• Make sure you are running adb as root and also you need to remount. Just enter these codes

adb root
adb remount

• Now its time to push the su binary:

adb -e push adb -e push UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.82-20170528234214/x64/su /system/xbin/su

Nevermind about my specific location of su binary, any location is okay as long there is no white space

To figure out bin or xbin do in console before:

adb shell ls /system/xbin/su

For emulators running android 5.1 and below use the su and not su.pie

Change permissions of the su binary

• Next let's do a bit of modification of the permissions of su binary. We have to do this in emulator device through adb:

adb -e shell su root cd /system/xbin chmod 06755 su

Take note of su binary path (mine is /system/xbin)

• Setting the install directive on su binary and set a daemon

su --install
su --daemon&

Setting SELinux to Permissive (i.e turning off SE Linux)

• Finally turn off selinux through this code: setenforce 0

• Open SuperSU app on the Mobile emulator and it may ask to update binaries, you can use Normal method.

If you're experiencing bootloops, rather don't update the binaries, just use it as it is.

Now you have an emulator with root!