Bootloader Unlock & Recovery Guide

Caution

Please read every section thoroughly before doing anything to your device. Make sure you understand how to do each of the steps!

Note

Before proceeding with bootloader unlock, you must be in realme UI 2.0. If you are on realme UI 3.0, follow this downgrade guide to go back to realme UI 2.0. Similarly, if you’re on realme UI 1.0, please update to realme UI 2.0 via settings. If the update does not show up, follow this troubleshooting steps.

1. Turn on developer options and enable OEM unlock.

2. Download mtkclient. You might need to disable Windows’ real time protection. Extract the zip and install usbdk inside the extracted folder.

3. Open mtk gui 2.0 and do not close it.

4. Power off your phone. Press vol up and vol down simultaneously and connect it to the PC. DO NOT release the volume buttons until connection succeeds.

Tip

The volume key must be pressed BEFORE connecting it to the PC, and keep the key pressed while connecting it. Once it succeeds, the key may be released.

5. In mtkclient, go to ‘Flash Tools’ section and click ‘Unlock Bootloader’ button.

6. Go to ‘Erase Partition’ section and erase the following partitions:

   md_udc
   metadata
   userdata

Danger

Step 5 & 6 will ERASE YOUR DATA. Make a backup before proceeding.

Enabling fastboot

Unlike official bootloader unlock method (which is dead), unlocking with mtkclient doesn’t make fastboot work out of the box. Patched lk is needed to make fastboot work. lk stands for ‘little kernel’, which is what MTK uses as the bootloader.

Technically, you can achieve similar result of unlocking by official method. Just ask for seccfg dump from someone whose bootloader was unlocked via official method, and flash it to your device with mtkclient. You don’t even need to unlock first via mtkclient. The benefit of this (and thus the prior official method) is that you will not suffer from dm-verity corruption and therefore don’t need patched LKs. However this hasn’t been tested and you should not do this if you’re a beginner.

Download the appropriate lk for your device

click this for list of patched lks

Steps for flashing lk

1. Open mtk gui 2.0 and do not close it.

2. Power off your phone. Press vol up and vol down simultaneously and connect it to the PC. DO NOT release the volume buttons until connection succeeds.

Tip

The volume key must be pressed BEFORE connecting it to the PC, and keep the key pressed while connecting it. Once it succeeds, the key may be released.

3. Go to ‘Write Partition’ section. Set the downloaded lk file for lk partition and flash. Do not touch lk2.

4. Disconnect cable and hold all buttons until fastboot appears. You can now flash recovery you wish to use.

Flashing Recovery

For a list of recoveries and their link, check out recoveries section.

Recovery flashing guide

1. Boot to fastboot. Power off phone and hold all three buttons until fastboot appears.

2. Connect your device and verify it via fastboot devices.

3. Now the flashing part:

fastboot flash recovery <drag and drop recovery file>

4. Reboot into recovery:

fastboot reboot recovery

5. Now you can flash whatever you want to.

Tip

If you do nothing in recovery and reboot back into realme UI, your custom recovery will be overwritten and it will become realme UI recovery again. You will need to repeat the process all over again.