TeamWin Recovery Project, or TWRP for short, is by far the most popular custom recovery solution in the Android modding scene. Although the tinkering fanbase has significantly dwindled over the years, but there are still people out there dedicated to the craft, which means a recent flagship receiving a port of TWRP is quite a big deal. This is exactly what happens with the Galaxy S23 series, as XDA Senior Member afaneh92 has managed to come up with an almost functional build of TWRP for Samsung's latest offering.

When it comes to the Galaxy S lineup, Exynos versus Snapdragon has always been a big talking point - both among the regular consumers and in the aftermarket development circles. The Korean OEM used to sell the Exynos variants in more regions than the Snapdragon one. In addition, the bootloader of the US and Canadian Snapdragon models can't be unlocked, a design which essentially forced most of the modding jobs centered around the Exynos-powered editions. This changes with the Galaxy S23 series, as all regional variants are now powered by a modified Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. As a result, you don't need to deal with two separate sets of TWRP builds for the Galaxy S family any more.

For now, the unofficial TWRP is only compatible with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the SM-S918B model to be precise. There are a number of reasons why the development is an important feat. To begin with, afaneh92 compiled the recovery image by relying on the stock kernel that shipped with the device. Due to the fact that Samsung has yet to publish the kernel sources for the Galaxy S23 series, the developer can't go through the actual codebase. There is no support for handling the encryption routines and you can't read/write the EROFS-formatted partitions, but the rest of the functionalities should work as expected.

Download unofficial TWRP for the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

Make sure you read through the step-by-step installation instructions to avoid running into a bootloop or other issues. Even if you have a bootloader-unlockable Galaxy S23 model, keep in mind that installing a third-party binary (e.g. TWRP) irreversibly trips the Knox warranty bit and disables subsequent OTA updates, so proceed with caution.

XDA forums: Samsung Galaxy S23 || Galaxy S23 Plus || Galaxy S23 Ultra