How to upgrade a Trezor device without wallet.trezor.io?

Question

How to update a Trezor device without the Trezor backend?

The Trezor backend at wallet.trezor.io is suboptimal from a privacy perspective. Many people choose to use Electrum, Wasabi or any other wallet that offers more privacy.

The Trezor Android app may be able to upgrade a Trezor wallet this but it didn't do anything for me plus it's unclear whether it sends your XPUB to Trezor's servers anyway. So is it possible to update a Trezor hardware wallet without going to wallet.trezor.io or the Trezor Android app, and if so, how?

Answer 1

It is possible to use the trezor command line client trezorctl available here to install a firmware you downloaded from trezor as described in the developer docs here.

BE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR SEED

"1) Pick version of firmware binary listed on https://wallet.trezor.io/data/firmware/1/releases.json 2) Download it: wget -O trezor.signed.bin https://wallet.trezor.io/data/firmware/1/trezor-1.6.1.bin 3) Use trezorctl dry-run mode to get the firmware fingerprint:

trezorctl firmware-update -n -f trezor.signed.bin

Step 3 should produce the same fingerprint like your local build (for the same version tag)."

Then it can be installed from the command line:

WARNING: This will erase the recovery seed stored on the device! You should never do this on Trezor that contains coins!

Build with MEMORY_PROTECT=0 or you will get a hard fault on your device.

Switch your device to bootloader mode, then execute:

trezorctl firmware-update -f path/to/firmware.bin