Magisk 31.0 Final for Android

Magisk roots Android by patching the boot image, leaving every file on the system partition exactly as the manufacturer shipped it.

Version 31.0 is the biggest change to the app in years, with the entire interface rebuilt from scratch in Jetpack Compose and Material 3.

One thing to settle before you start, because it is the reason most people come looking: Magisk does not hide root any more.

What Systemless Root Actually Means

Older rooting tools wrote files into the system partition. That broke OTA updates, tripped verified boot, and left changes that were awkward to undo.

Magisk takes a different route. It patches the ramdisk inside your boot image so that a small piece of Magisk code starts early, then mounts your modifications over the top of the real system at runtime. The system partition itself is never written to, which is why official updates still install and why removing Magisk returns the phone to stock.

The trade is that you have to unlock the bootloader first, and that is a permanent, visible change to the device. Nothing in this article gets around that.

Magisk Does Not Hide Root Any More

This needs saying plainly, because a great many pages still promise otherwise and readers act on them.

This is not our reading of the situation. The project's own documentation states it outright: Magisk no longer handles root hiding.

What survives is DenyList, and it is narrower than its reputation. DenyList unmounts Magisk's modifications from the processes you name, so an app on the list sees a filesystem without your modules in it. Version 31.0 adds webview_zygote to the processes it can unmount from.

That is useful for an app that simply trips over a module. It is not a cloak, and it does nothing about an unlocked bootloader, which is what integrity checks actually look at now.

What Is New in Magisk 31.0

Released on 4 September 2026, this one is mostly about the app rather than the root implementation.

• A completely rewritten interface. The old XML layouts, Databinding and Fragment architecture are gone, replaced by Jetpack Compose and Material 3.
• A built-in terminal emulator with full TTY and ANSI support, so module flashing and action scripts show you their real output instead of a spinner.
• Streaming boot image extraction from a remote OTA URL, which means you can point the app at an OTA package and let it pull the image out rather than downloading the whole thing first.
• Zygisk now supports Android 17, plus Meta Quest devices running Horizon OS.
• MagiskBoot handles dynamic zImage payload sizes without needing exact size padding on repack, and uses a lower XZ and LZMA compression preset to cut memory use.
• resetprop gains a --compact flag for compacting property storage areas, and MagiskPolicy fixes identifier parsing for names containing hyphens.

A full rewrite of this size tends to shake out edge cases, and topjohnwu knows it. A legacy build using the old interface is published alongside the new one as Magisk-v31.0-legacy.apk, and it will keep being built for a couple of releases. Grab it from the legacy build link if the new app misbehaves on your device.

Worth knowing that 31.0 is published as a pre-release while v30.7 remains the last tag marked stable. If you want the conservative option, 30.7 is it.

What Is Inside

• MagiskSU: the superuser daemon, with per-app permission control and optional fingerprint or face confirmation on each request.
• Magisk modules: packaged modifications that mount over the system at boot and can be disabled or removed without touching real system files.
• Zygisk: runs Magisk inside the Zygote process, which lets modules load their own code into app processes.
• DenyList: unmounts Magisk's changes from processes you choose, so those apps see an unmodified filesystem.
• MagiskBoot: the boot image tool that does the unpacking, patching and repacking.
• resetprop: reads and writes system properties, including read-only ones the framework normally locks.

How to Install Magisk 31.0

The supported method is patching your own boot image in the Magisk app and flashing the result with fastboot. If you already run Magisk, ignore all of this and use Direct Install inside the app instead.

• Unlock the bootloader if you have not already, and accept that this wipes the device.
• Install the Magisk APK and open it. The home screen reports whether your device has a ramdisk in the boot partition.
• Get the matching image out of the firmware for the build currently on your phone. That is boot.img on most devices, init_boot.img on devices launched with Android 13 or later, or recovery.img if the app told you there is no boot ramdisk.
• Copy the image to the phone, press Install in the Magisk card, choose Select and Patch a File, and tick Recovery Mode first if you are patching a recovery image.
• Pull the patched file back with adb pull /sdcard/Download/magisk_patched_[random].img.
• Reboot to fastboot and flash it to the partition it came from, for example fastboot flash init_boot magisk_patched_[random].img.
• Reboot, open the app, and accept the additional setup prompt when it appears.

The full procedure, including the vbmeta step and the exact fastboot commands, is in the official installation guide. It is short and it is worth reading before you flash anything.

Samsung, and Devices With No Boot Ramdisk

Samsung is its own procedure. You patch the AP tar from the official firmware rather than a boot image, and you flash it with Odin alongside the original BL, CP and CSC files.

Two things are worth knowing before you commit. Installing Magisk trips the Knox warranty bit permanently, with no way back, and the first install requires a full data wipe on top of the one the bootloader unlock already caused. Devices sold in the USA and Canada generally cannot be unlocked at all.

Separately, some devices have no ramdisk in the boot partition. On those Magisk hijacks the recovery partition instead, which means you have to boot with the recovery key combo every time you want root, and a normal power-on gives you a phone with no Magisk running.

Custom Recovery Is Deprecated

Flashing the renamed APK as a zip in TWRP still works on devices that have boot ramdisk, but upstream describes the method as deprecated and maintained with minimum effort, and does not recommend it on modern hardware.

If you flash it that way and hit anything odd, patch the image properly rather than debugging the recovery route. It is the same install either way, and one of the two paths is still being tested.

When Something Goes Wrong

A bad module bootlooping the phone is the common failure, and there are two documented ways out.

If USB debugging was already enabled, connect the phone to a PC and run magisk --remove-modules from an ADB shell. That strips every module and reboots. You will want the platform tools on your desktop for this, which live with the rest of the Mobile Devices tools.

If debugging was off, the Safe Mode key combo is the fallback, and the timing matters. Magisk checks for the combo earlier in boot than Android does, so the usual advice to start holding volume down when the logo appears is often too late. Press volume down a few seconds before the animation instead, and release it as the boot animation starts.

One more that catches people out: if the app reports Magisk Installed as N/A after an update while su still works, you probably have a leftover stub from the Hide the Magisk app option. Find it in Settings, Apps, usually named Settings, uninstall it, and reinstall the full app. The official FAQ covers both cases in more detail.

What You Need Before You Start

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow or newer. Support for Android 5 and below was dropped in Magisk v26.
• An unlockable bootloader, and the willingness to unlock it and lose everything on the device.
• A PC with ADB and fastboot, plus the correct USB drivers.
• The exact firmware matching the build currently installed, so you patch the right image.
• A backup you have actually checked, taken before you start rather than after the first error message.

Before installing any APK from anywhere, including this page, run it through the APK Checker to confirm the package name and signature are what they claim to be. If you are sideloading onto a device with no Google services, Play Store Check will tell you whether an APK runs without them.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The clearest tell is in Developer options. If OEM unlocking is missing or greyed out and stays that way after a reboot with an internet connection, your device is carrier-locked or region-locked and no rooting tool reaches it.

The second tell is your app list. If a banking app, a payment wallet or a competitive game is something you need daily, unlocking the bootloader will most likely break it and Magisk will not fix that.

The third is the reason you want root in the first place, because a lot of what people root for now has an unrooted answer.

Klick'r automates repetitive taps through the accessibility API, and Bluetooth Codec Changer forces LDAC or aptX without touching the boot image.

If you are not sure which codec your headphones actually negotiate, our guide on how to check which Bluetooth codecs your phone supports walks through it in a couple of minutes.

The same goes for playback. VLC for Android and MX Player handle awkward formats without root of any kind.

Codec Info is worth installing alongside them, because it lists what your hardware can genuinely decode and that is usually the real answer to a file that will not play.

Quick questions

Older Versions

Previous Magisk releases are kept available for devices that need a specific build, which is common on older hardware and on ROMs that shipped against a particular version. All of them are the unmodified files from the developer's own releases.

If you are new to sideloading generally, the rest of the Android APK section is worth a look.

Downloader by AFTVnews is the usual way to get files onto an Android TV box, and 4K Video Downloader for Android is another app that exists only as a sideloaded APK.

Most of the media work people used to root for no longer needs root at all.

• FFmpeg Media Encoder converts video and audio on the phone itself, with no PC and no upload.
• foobar2000 Mobile covers gapless playback and high-resolution audio formats.
• Image Toolbox handles format conversion, EXIF editing and background removal.

One genuine exception is MX Player Custom Codec, which restores AC3, EAC3 and DTS decoding to MX Player and has to be sideloaded because the licensing keeps it out of the store build.

Download Magisk 31.0 and see how it goes on your device, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.