What to Do When You Forgot Your iPhone Passcode
“Please help! I forgot the passcode for my iPhone 6 and entered the wrong password multiple times. Now the iPhone is disabled. What can I do?”
Set a password on your iPhone or iPad screen is a good way to keep others from accessing the device and protect privacy. However, if you enter the wrong passcode into an iOS device six times in a row, you’ll be locked out and have no access to everything stored on it.
What to do if you forgot your iPhone or iPad passcode? Is it possible to get data back from a disabled iPhone or iPad? How to unlock iPhone/iPad passcode to regain access? Don’t worry. Here we’ll discuss how to reset iPhone password and how to retrieve data from a locked/disabled iPhone. Read on to find out the solution.
- How to Reset iPhone Password
- 1. Restore your iPhone from iTunes backup
- 2. Erase your device with iCloud
- 3. Erase your device with Recovery Mode
- Retrieve Data from a Locked iPhone
How to Reset iPhone Password
To unlock an iPhone with forgotten passcode, there is no way but to erase your device, which deletes all of your data and setting, including the passcode from your device. Here are three different ways to finish this task.
1. Restore your iPhone from iTunes backup
If you’ve previously backed up your iPhone or iPad with iTunes, you can restore your device from an old iTunes backup to wipe out the passcode you can’t remember. Provided that your iPhone has been synced with iTunes before and this time iTunes can detect your device directly without asking a passcode. Besides, the Find My iPhone feature should not be enabled on your device, or the process cannot go on.
- Step 1. Connect your iPhone to the computer you used to back up your device.
- Step 2. Open iTunes on the computer. If you are using a Mac with macOS Catalina 10.15, open Finder.
- Step 3. Select your device when it appears in the iTunes or Finder window.
- Step 4. Click the Restore Backup button in the iTunes iPhone Management screen.
- Step 5. Select the most relevant backup to be used for the restore.
- Step 6. Click Restore and wait for the restore process to be completed.
2. Erase your device with iCloud
If Find My iPhone is enabled on your iPhone or iPad, you can visit the Find My iPhone page at iCloud.com in your web browser to erase your device and its passcode.
- Step 1. Visit iCloud.com in any web browser on your computer.
- Step 2. Log into your iCloud account that you used to set up Find My iPhone.
- Step 3. Click on Find iPhone, then proceed to click All Devices and select the device you need to erase.
- Step 4. Click Erase iPhone. When an alert appear, click Erase to confirm.
- Step 5. Set up your iPhone as if it is a new one. You could restore your data and settings from your iCloud backup.
3. Erase your device with Recovery Mode
If you’ve never synced with iTunes or set up Find My iPhone iCloud, you can try to put your iPhone or iPad into recovery mode to erase the device and its passcode. Follow these steps to complete this task.
- Step 1. Open iTunes of the latest version on your computer. On a Mac with macOS Catalina 10.15, open Finder. If iTunes is already open, close and reopen it.
- Step 2. Connect your iPhone to the computer and put it in recovery mode.
- On iPhone 8 or later: Press the Volume Up button and quickly release it. Press the Volume Down button and quickly release it. Then, press and hold the Side button until you see the recovery mode screen.
- On iPhone 7 or 7 Plus: Press and hold the Side and Volume Down button at the same time until you see the recovery mode screen.
- On iPhone 6s or earlier: Press and hold both the Home and Side button at the same time. Don’t release them until you see the recovery mode screen.
- Step 3. Choose the Restore option from the iTunes window. This will erase all data from your iPhone and you could set up your iPhone from scratch.
Retrieve Data from a Locked iPhone
As we mentioned before, resetting iPhone passcode will wipe out all data and settings on your device. There is no way to save or recover the data on your iPhone unless you’ve made a backup before.
If you’ve made an iTunes backup before you forgot your passcode, you can use Free iPhone Backup Extractor to get your data back. Although you can find iPhone backup file on computer, but your data are saved into unreadable formats. This freeware can access your iTunes backup to extract data, including contacts, messages, photos, videos, notes, WhatsApp, etc. See what the iTunes Backup Extractor can do for you.
Main Features of the iTunes Backup Extractor:
- Freely access and view iTunes backup contents in detail.
- Archive old iTunes backup files on your computer by the date of backup.
- Selectively extract all kinds of data from your iTunes backup to computer or external drive.
- Export and save data on the computer in readable formats like TXT, PDF, CSV, etc.
Now, freely download and install the iTunes Backup Extractor on your Mac or PC. Then, follow the steps below to retrieve data from the backup of your locked iPhone.
- Step 1. Open the iTunes Backup Extractor software on your computer.
- Step 2. Select an iTunes backup file from the list and click on “Next” to continue.
- Step 3. Select the file types you want to extract and click on “Next” to begin scanning.
- Step 4. Preview the scanned files in details and click on “Recover” to save them on PC.
If you backed up your iPhone to iCloud before, you could erase your iPhone with Find My iPhone in iCloud and then recover the data by restoring your iPhone from an iCloud backup.
Final Words
Now you’ve read all the three methods of how to reset iPhone password when you forgot the passcode to your device and how to retrieve data from a locked/disabled iPhone. We hope you have succeeded to remove the iPhone passcode and keep your data intact. Any queries and suggestions are welcomed in the comment section below.