How to root a Nexus 6 device on a mac

I was seeing few crashes in fabric that are saying rooted phones and that are no reproducing on a rooted device and also this keynote from @RealAlanCrouch talked extensively of its benefits for testing.

How

I must admit this was not as easy as I thought it would be and it took me about 3 years to figure this out. Part of the reason is that information about this in google is very scatterred and not complete at many blog posts. And these posts from shady sites with a lot of ads and/or crappy design.

So I thought I should one more blog post to make the process simple and clear.

Assumptions:

1. You are on a mac
2. You have a motorola nexus 6 device with Android 7
3. Your already installed adb and it is on your path
4. Developer tools is enabled on your already

Step 1: Enable OEM Unlock box and USB debugging

Go to developer tools and enable these two options

Step 2: Get this CF-root zip file for shamu

This is the shady part of the whole process, downloading a zip file and then running a script with admin access.. yikes.

But I did it anyways and seems like a lot of people on the internet are doing it.

The direct link is — https://download.chainfire.eu/628/CF-Root/CF-Auto-Root/CF-Auto-Root-shamu-shamu-nexus6.zip

The main site https://autoroot.chainfire.eu seems a bit legit and it has zip file for a lot of devices

Step 3: Unzip this file and enable execute access

Find the files from this zipped folder in a terminal root-mac.sh and tools/fastboot-mac and do chmod 444 on them

Step 4: Enter the nexus 6 in bootloader mode

Power off the phone

Then power on holding the volume down button. This will enter in a cmd line prompt

Here make sure that device is unlocked is being shown

Step 5: Now run root-mac.sh script and give admin privelges

This will take a while and will restart the phone for few times

Happy rooting!