Strongly recommend before you start, get a headlamp like for camping and make sure it's charged up good. Even next to a bright south facing window I had difficulty with the shadows inside the phone and along the edges. Headlamp helped.

Mine did make some clicks as I pressed it in. Start with the left edge and be gentle with aligning it and it will just sort of fall into place.

This part was so easy compared to times I've done similar repairs on older phones. Definitely start with the left top corner.

This part is so difficult and took forever, easily 40 minutes. Here's what worked for me:

1) scrape with spudger a ton. So very much. so much spudging.

2) pull off balled up bits with tweezer.

3) Carefully apply 70% isopropyl alcohol (it's all I had) to edges with q tips.

4) More spudging.

5) Apply more alcohol with spudger tips.

6) Scrape up the adhesive with the plier tips, yeah it's super tedious because they're tiny but you can get a ball going, and then the adhesive starts to stick to itself better than the frame, so it will start pilling up more effectively. Then pull off.

7) Repeat until you want to cry. Eventually it will all come up!

This actually went quite smoothly. Much easier repair than the previous time I did a repair (I think that was on my Pixel 3a or 4a or something). I remember in the past attaching the adhesive was a nightmare and it got totally tangled in itself, but applying it this time with the multiple liners was a breeze. In this repair, removing the old adhesive took the most time, easily 40 minutes. Total repair time was probably more like 2-2.5 hours because of the old adhesive.

Pick is nowhere near good enough to start the process, and the suction cup is really weak. I didn't have an iOpener because I didn't want to buy it. I had one or two cracks near the middle of the screen, not that bad but enough that pulling the suction cup just made it come loose. I had to 1) apply packing tape to the screen, 2) soak the suction cup in a bit of near-boiling water for a minute or two, 3) use the edge of my pocket knife (had no razor blades), and most importantly 4) hold the phone with the bottom edge against my chest, top edge in my off-hand, point the screen toward my offhand, and pull the suction cup with my offhand. This position was WAY easier than having the phone flat on the desk.

This looks to be no longer true--October 2024 I received a screen adhesive with my screen, and had ordered a separate one, so now I have two.

UBUNTU USERS: You have to use Chrome to access this page. Then, you might get an error where it says the device cannot be connected even when it's recognized. This is because there is another step left out of the guide, you won't find out about it until you click 'Google USB driver', which is only described as being necessary for Windows. (I found out because I tried to boot into Windows, clicked that link, then found the note about Linux).

If you are running Ubuntu, at the "install USB driver" step, go here and follow the steps under 'Set up a device for development'. Reposted for posterity:

In terminal

sudo usermod -aG plugdev $LOGNAME

Log out, then log back in

Then in terminal again:

sudo apt install android-sdk-platform-tools-common

After that, go back to the udfps page and it should successfully connect to your phone this time.

I have some relatively old electronics repair experience (2009-2010 hardware repair for laptops, iMacs, desktops). I’ve done many very similar steps on larger devices, so I wasn’t intimidated. That being said, it still took me 1.5 hours to do—but it did work by the end! I added many comments above at each step that will hopefully help others not spend so much time and not make my same mistakes.

When you go to apply the pre-cut adhesive, it will be harder than correctly applying screen protectors. Although it’s awkward, align it from the top first without taking the backing off, make sure it’s flush all the way down. fix it in place at the top with your hand and then remove the backing. Hopefully that will help apply it evenly. I started from the bottom and it was a huge mistake. If you mess it up and try to peel it up, the narrow adhesive on the sides will stretch a lot and you’ll have to break it and then sort of carefully nudge it into place millimeter by millimeter. I had to do this and used the pointy black spudger end. Even so, I was able to get it relatively flat and the screen seems pretty flush with the body.