When you purchase your brand new Nexus 6 you will likely be fine with the power and features you get with the device as it is. This said if you are one of those that wants to squeeze every ounce of power and be able to customize everything you will first need to unlock the Nexus 6 bootloader to accomplish this. Unlocking the bootloader is a pre-requisite for just about any out of the box modification you want including rooting it.
Unlocking the bootloader of your Nexus 6 allows you the opportunity to do things like flash a ROM, root it, or put on a custom recovery. It opens up your device to all sorts of access and features like power management that you wouldn’t typically have using the stock ROM. It doesn’t immediately provide you with any new features, but with an unlocked bootloader you have the freedom to do just about anything you want to the device.
How to Unlock the Nexus 6 Bootloader
- Navigate to the settings app from quick menu or app drawer
- go to “About Phone” and enable developer options by tapping “Build Number” repeatedly 7 times.
- You should now see “Developer Options” under the “About Phone” menu
- Tap the Developer option to enable it and select “Enable OEM unlock”
- Next enable “USB Debugging”
- Download and extract “adb-fastboot.zip” where you can find it on your PC
- Connect your Nexus 6 to your PC via USB (If phone is not recognized see Step 1 above)
- If all is well at this point you may see a popup asking you to “Allow USB debugging on Nexus 6”, Press “OK” to accept.
- Open a command prompt window and navigate to the fast boot files you extracted earlier.
- Reboot the Nexus 6 into Bootloader mode by typing “adb reboot bootloader” and pressing enter
- if it does not reboot then Power down the Nexus 6 and then turn it on by holding the Volume down + power buttons for a few seconds.
- From the Fastboot menu use the volume buttons to navigate to “Fastboot Mode” and the power button to select it
- Once you are in Fastboot Mode go back to your command prompt and type “fastboot oem unlock and press enter
- On the Nexus 6 press the power up button to continue with bootloader unlock
- Once complete the Nexus 6 will reboot on its own automatically.
Now that you have your Nexus 6 Bootloader unlocked you are free to flash any files you like on the device like including rooting the device. If you have any issues with the process feel free to drop us a comment below or reach out via any social network to the right of the page. Should be a pretty straight forward process no matter which Nexus 6 build you have (LRX210 or LRX22C).