How do I request root access in Android?

Solution 1:

Just exec the command su and within that Process you have root priviliges:

Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su");

See this blog post for full example.

Solution 2:

WARNING

THIS METHOD IS NO LONGER VALID From 5.0

Most root devices use Superuser or SuperSU, if you wanna root ability in your app, you should claim superuser permission in your app manifest.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_SUPERUSER" />

More detailed information, you should check HOW-To SU by Chainfire (The author of SuperSU) and look into the example source libsuperuser(https://github.com/Chainfire/libsuperuser)