Substratum to Work on Custom ROMs without Root Soon

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Earlier this week, Nicholas Chum from the Substratum team uploaded a few screenshots that gave us a glimpse at an upcoming feature for the popular theme engine. What we saw are four screenshots that showed the theme engine installed on a custom ROM with its own Customization option within the main Settings application. We saw that a theme was applied and that a new theme had just finished being compiled without any errors.

Then, the big news here was from the fourth screenshot that was uploaded. The screenshot was from a root checker application and the result of the check showed that this Nexus 6P with Android 7.1.1. Nougat was not rooted at all. If you’re a fan of Substratum, or simply know how it works, then you will know that the application needs root access in order to function properly. However, it seems like this will be changing in a future update.

Suggested reading: Interview with the Substratum team

Mr. Chum thanks both Ivan Iskandar​ for the Substratum commits and +Randall Rushing​ for the platform commits that has enabled this new feature. Working without root will not work on a stock version of Android, but it should work on all custom ROMs which have had integrated this special masquerade job engine and new version of Substratum. While many here at XDA will not mind rooting their device to gain theme support, some have refused to use the application because of it.

Mr. Chum says they’re unaware of how smooth this transition will go at first (from root to rootless). There will be a statement released to custom ROM developers soon who want to use this new version in their builds. This will include instructions on building this into their custom ROMs and after testing they can start making their new custom ROMs public. If everything goes smoothly, it will be as simple as doing a dirty flash on top of your current custom ROM.