[Guide] How to capture an OTA link for the Oneplus3/T
Step 0: You will need to have adb/fastboot tools setup on your computer. If you don't know how to use these tools, I suggest first learning about how to do so.
Step 1: Make sure you're running the latest version of OxygenOS, just before the update. For example, if you want to capture the OTA link for the 4.5.0 update, then make sure that you're running on the 4.1.7 build.
Step 2: Enable the Developer Options settings. Enable USB debugging. Connect your phone to the computer. In the terminal, type in adb devices. Accept the prompt that appears on your phone, and make sure that the device name shows up on the computer.
Step 3: If your phone has already received the option to OTA update (if you live in Germany, for example), proceed to step 4. If when you click on "update software", you do not see any update, then download a VPN app like Opera from the Play Store, and set the location to Germany.
Step 4:
a. To capture a partial OTA link (under 500mb)
Proceed to step 5.
b. To capture the OTA link of a full update
Your phone needs to be rooted. It is very important to note that just having a custom recovery installed, or having SuperSU installed will not trigger the OTA for a full download. That is because SuperSU roots your phone in a systemless manner. Having a custom kernel installed did not work for me either. Finally, I used phh's SuperSU, which triggered the download for the full update.
Step 5:
In the terminal, type adb logcat > OTA.txt. You can replace OTA.txt with any file name you like. On your phone, go to settings, and click on update software. You will be prompted with an OTA update download based on what you did in step 4. Click start download, and then click pause download. On the computer terminal, type control+C, which will stop the logcat.
Step 6: Now in the folder that you have adb set up, you'll see a text document called OTA.txt. Open this file. Using the search function, search for ".zip", and when you search around that text, you will find a download link, that allows you to manually download the OTA update.
In this manner, you will be able to capture the OTA download link, and download the update zip manually. Hopefully this helps more people capture OTA links in the future, so we have OTA links coming up on XDA faster. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.
