Install TWRP and Root Huawei P20 and P20 Pro

Huawei recently launched the Huawei P20 Lite, P20 and P20 Pro in the international market whereas it brought only the P20 Pro and P20 Lite to India. The P20 series made a lot of bold choices, particularly in the design department. It introduced a new twilight color where the back of the phone is a mixture of two colors that fade into each other perfectly. It gives off that twilight look to it and it’s amazing. If you have a Huawei P20 or P20 Pro you can now install TWRP on your device and root it, in that particular order.

XDA Senior Member Pretoriano80 has managed to bring a working TWRP recovery to the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro. This is not an official recovery from TeamWin so expect a few bugs. However, for the most part, the recovery by Pretoriano80 seems to work fine. As it stands right now, you can’t create a backup of the /recovery_ramdisk and /vendor partitions. The good thing is you don’t have to wipe your data every time you want to flash something from TWRP. That’s because this TWRP build can decrypt your device quite easily and all you have to do is simply enter your screen lock pattern, PIN or password when TWRP boots.

Warning

Rooting your device will void its warranty but if you’re here you’ve probably already made up your mind about it. We can assure you that the rooting method mentioned below has been successfully tested and that it works perfectly fine. What we can not assure you of is that everything that you do while (even if you follow this guide exactly) will produce the desired result. That is to say, there’s always a risk that something can go wrong. In which case, you must understand that you were warned, and you still went with it anyway. Therefore, DroidViews cannot be held liable for any damage to your device. Make sure you have backed up everything important, including files and folders on your device’s internal storage.

Requirements

• Your Huawei P20 / P20 Pro should have an unlocked bootloader. If you haven’t unlocked the bootloader yet you can take a look at our guide. To unlock the bootloader you’ll require a Huawei account which you can register for here.
• You will need ADB and Fastboot installed on your computer. Once again, if you haven’t got it, we have the guide for you. Here’s how to do it on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• Enable USB debugging on your Huawei P20 or P20 Pro. This can be done by going to Settings > System > About Phone and tapping the Build number several times. If you have a lock screen PIN or password you will be asked to enter it, after which Developer options are enabled. Go to
• Settings > System > Developer options and enable USB debugging.
• Windows users will also need to install Huawei USB drivers. A better way to do this is to just install Huawei’s HiSuite.

Downloads

• Unofficial TWRP for Huawei P20 & P20 Pro (Move the downloaded image into the adb folder. Moving is an optional step.) [Source: Pretoriano80] 
• Magisk 15.4 for Huawei & Honor Devices (Download and transfer the zip to your device’s internal storage) [Source: topjohnwu]

How to install TWRP on Huawei P20 & P20 Pro

1. Connect your P20/P20 Pro to your PC with a USB cable and launch ADB. On Windows, just go to the adb folder and enter cmd in the address bar.  If you have Minimal ADB & Fastboot you can simply search for it and click on it to launch it. On Mac and Linux, you can simply launch a Terminal window to start using ADB.
2. Reboot your phone into fastboot mode using the following ADB command.

   adb reboot bootloader

   You may need to allow USB debugging permissions on your phone if you haven’t done this before.

3. Once in fastboot mode, flash the downloaded unofficial TWRP image with this command.

   fastboot flash recovery_ramdisk /path/to/twrp_clt_0.1 .img

   Replace /path/to/ with the location path of the image file. If you’ve already moved the file into the adb folder, simply remove /path/to/ from the command. In case you have renamed the downloaded TWRP image, make sure you use the new name of the file instead. 

4. Restart your device with the following command:

   fastboot reboot

   As soon as you push the command, unplug the USB cable and press and hold the Volume up button so that your device can boot into TWRP instead of booting to the OS. This is important.

How to Root Huawei P20 & P20 Pro

1. When TWRP boots up, you will be required to enter you lockscreen PIN, pattern or password in order to decrypt your device’s internal storage.
2. Select Install from the TWRP menu, navigate to the downloaded Magisk zip and select it.
3. Swipe at the bottom to flash it.
4. Tap on the Reboot system button when the flashing is complete.