Are you wishing to root your Moto E so you can flash a custom recovery on it? The following guide will teach you how to do that by installing team Win’s TWRP Recovery for your custom recovery image. You can then leave here and start flashing your first custom ROM that’s made for your Motorola handset.

Here’s how:

REQUIREMENTS

• You can only follow this guide on the Motorola Moto E and not one of the other two handsets in the range like the Moto X or Moto G. You can brick your device.
• You have to unlock the bootloader in your Moto E before gaining root access and flashing a custom recovery.

BEFORE WE BEGIN

• You can’t do this until you install Android SDK on your Windows computer. There is another option out there to install ADB on a Mac, but that’s not included in this guide.
• We recommend taking a backup of the current data so you don’t lose those precious photos of your family stored away on your phone. Likewise, you might want to back up the contacts so you don’t lose them too.
• Have a Windows computer ready; make it the same one that has your Android SDK installed on it.
• Enable the USB Debugging Mode on the Moto E by navigating to Settings > Developer Options > check the box for USB Debugging so it’s not empty.

HOW TO INSTALL TWRP RECOVERY ON THE MOTOROLA MOTO E

• Boot the Moto E to Fastboot mode.
  –  press the Volume Down and Power buttons together for over 5 seconds and it should boot to fastboot.
• Download the TWRP Recovery file from here on your computer desktop.
• Shift the TWRP file to the same folder as the Android SDK.
• Now plug the Moto E into the computer via the USB cable.
• Open the Android SDK folder and open the command prompt by right-clicking a white space and choosing to open the command line.
• Type “fastboot flash recovery recovery.img” as your first command and hit the enter key.
• From fastboot mode, you must press the Volume Down, highlight the recovery and press down the Power key to select it.
• Now your Moto E is booting to recovery mode.
• Wait for a minute for the touch feature on the phone to start working as it needs to catch up.

That’s it! The TWRP recovery is installed and ready for you to upload a custom ROM file. Remember to follow the guides for installing the custom ROMS carefully. You should take a Nandroid backup of your current ROM before wiping the data or else you will lose that data between flashing custom ROMS.