Install ClockworkMod Touch for Free

It’s very easy to flash ClockworkMod recovery using the free ROM Manager app for Android. However, if you want to flash the nifty new ClockworkMod Touch with ROM Manager, you’ll need to use the pay version. Fortunately, the recovery image itself is still available for free and can be installed manually.

ClockworkMod recovery is a superb tool for flashing Android ROMs, backing up your ROM, restoring backups, and more. The touch version is even better, as you can navigate it using your touch screen rather than having to use the power and volume up/down buttons. Installing it for free is relatively easy, provided you have the right tool: fastboot.

First, you’ll need to visit the ClockworkMod ROM Manager recoveries page and check to see if ClockworkMod Touch is even available for your phone. If it is, download the appropriate recovery image file (it will have “touch” in the filename and .img for the extension). If you’re phone says N/A, unfortunately you’re out of luck. Keep an eye on the page, as ClockworkMod Touch is being ported to other phones all the time.

If you don’t already have fastboot, you’ll need to download the Android SDK. You’ll find fastboot either in the platform-tools or tools folder. With the recovery image and fastboot, you’re all set to flash ClockworkMod Touch recovery:

• Plug your phone into your computer with a USB cable
• Boot/reboot your phone into the bootloader

  Most phones allow you to do this by holding down the volume down (or volume up) as you boot the phone. One important thing to note is that if you’re using a newer version of Android with fast boot (not to be confused with the fastboot command line tool), you’ll need to disable it to reboot your phone into recovery mode. Otherwise, you can always remove the battery to do a full shutdown and then turn it back on while holding down the appropriate button.

  

• Your bootloader should now say it is in FASTBOOT USB mode.
• From your computer, run the following command:

  fastboot flash recovery recovery-image-file.img

You won’t see anything happen on the phone, but on your computer you should see info as it uploads the image file and subsequently flashes it. Here’s what the output looks like when I flash Clockworkmod Touch on my EVO 3D from my Linux box:

./fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-touch-5.8.0.2-shooter.img 
sending 'recovery' (4128 KB)...
OKAY [  1.074s]
writing 'recovery'...
OKAY [  8.640s]
finished. total time: 9.714s

You can see from the output that it should take around 10 seconds. If you’re using a Linux box, don’t forget to run the command when you are logged in as root, otherwise you will not be able to connect to the phone.

The next time you reboot your phone into recovery mode, you’ll have ClockworkMod Touch! You can use fastboot to flash any recovery image, not just ClockworkMod.

Please note that backups generated from other recoveries (namely TWRP – TeamWin Recovery Project) are not compatible with ClockworkMod. If you want to convert your backups to ClockWorkMod, it will take a lot of back-and-forth in restoring backups and flashing the appropriate recovery tool.