So, you’ve forgotten your iPhone passcode, and no matter what you try, you can’t access your phone.
What do you do? Well in this short video, I’m going to show you.
Now I’m guessing that you’re here because you’ve forgotten your passcode, and don’t worry,
we’ll get to the fix in literally a few seconds, but if you’re watching this video out of curiosity
and not because you’ve locked yourself out of your phone, stick with me until the end, as once I’ve
shown you the solution to this problem, I’ll also be sharing with you some tips to ensure that if
this ever happens to you, you can fix it in the least painful way possible, as well as how to
avoid it happening in the first place. OK, let’s get into it.
Right, let’s cut to the chase, you’re stuck on this screen, your Face or Touch ID
isn’t available to you as an option, and your phone is insistent on you inputting
a passcode, which you do not remember. The first thing to point out is that, whilst
you won’t be able to get into your iPhone without the passcode, you will get quite a few attempts at
this, so the first piece of advice is don’t panic. Your best case scenario is that, in one of these
attempts, you’ll get the passcode right, so whilst it might sound obvious, you should definitely try
as many attempts at remembering your passcode as you can. The way this works, is that with each
run of failed attempts, your iPhone will enter a ‘cool off’ period. Initially this is a minute,
but as you continue to input incorrect passcodes, that time will increase, and whilst it might sound
counter-intuitive, you need this to happen, because the option that we want will only
show once you get to the 15 minute lockout period. But let’s say you just cannot remember the code.
Keep inputting code attempts, until the lockout period is 15 minutes, because when that happens,
you’ll be given the option down at the bottom right of the screen, to erase your iPhone.
When you tap on that option, you’re going to then need to input your Apple ID’s password.
Now, there’s no way around this, and that’s because Apple don’t want people who have stolen
iPhones to be able to use this function, this is to verify that the iPhone you’re trying to erase
is indeed your’s, so I’m afraid that you will need to know your Apple ID and
passcode to be able to go any further than this. Input your Apple ID password, follow the on-screen
steps, and your phone will eventually boot up like it did the first time that you powered it on,
fresh out of the box. This is essentially now a brand new phone, but it’s still linked to
your Apple ID, which again is to stop this from being used by thieves. From there,
you can either create the phone as a brand new device, or you can recreate it using a backup,
either by connecting it to your computer and using a local backup on iTunes, or I think as will be
applicable to most people, using an iCloud backup. Yes, this does mean that you’ve got to start as
if you’ve got a brand new phone, but that’s better than no phone.
So I mentioned at the start of this video that I’d suggest some tips for those of you who
are watching this without necessarily being in the situation of needing to erase your device,
or perhaps you’ve just followed these steps, you now have access to your phone again, and you want
to better prepare yourself for the future. As you’ll have seen from the steps that we
just followed, the most important thing you can do is to remember your passcode,
if you’ve got the passcode, you’ll always be able to access your device, and there are some
tips that I can share with you about this. First of all, don’t go for the obvious ones.
Have you seen the video of Kanye West meeting Donald Trump in the White House,
where he grabs his phone from his pocket and inputs the number zero six times? Honestly,
if that’s your passcode, or 123456, you might as well not bother having a passcode. Remember, your
passcode, as annoying as it might be, is there for your security, to stop someone from getting into
your phone if you lose it or have it stolen. Also, avoid anything that’s too easy to link
back to you. I hear people all the time saying that their pin is their birthday,
or their kid’s birthday or something like that. The problem with this, is that a thief could
probably find that information about you out, from publicly available information.
So, here’s a few ideas for how to create a memorable passcode.
You could think of a memorable 6 letter word, and then use the iPhone’s phone screen to match the
letters to the numbers. It’s scientifically proven that as humans, we find it much easier to remember
words than we do random strings of numbers, so this could be an easy solution for most people.
You could try something else meaningful, like an address for example,
or even a combination of addresses. Maybe your last few addresses were house number 23,
house number 19 and house number 13? There’s a six digit passcode
that would be easy for you to remember, but really difficult for anyone to figure out.
And if you have to write the passcode down, don’t write the actual passcode itself down,
write a hint that’s going to help you get to the code, but still keep it cryptic.
Maybe, the year and day of your favourite holiday, or your pet’s birthdays combined, anything that’s
going to be easy for you to remember, but very difficult for anyone to guess, or figure out.
Another memorable passcode idea that I really like, is to fake a contact.
Create someone in your contacts list, and make sure that the name is memorable to you, but not
an obvious fake to anyone with your phone. Then hide the passcode somewhere in the phone number.
You can then technically always have the passcode with you, but nobody will ever know. Even better,
perhaps you could do this for your partner, and they could do this for you, so I might have a
contact on my phone where I’ve hidden my wife’s passcode, and she could do the same for me.
Oh and the final tip, is to make sure that you’ve always got a backup of your phone stored
either locally, or in the cloud. The cloud is the easiest way to do this, and you do this by going
to Settings, tapping on your name up here at the top, then choosing iCloud, then iCloud Backup, and
ensuring that iCloud Backup is enabled. Your phone will then automatically backup on a regular basis,
and if you wish to force a manual backup, you can do so using the button at the bottom.
This way, if you do forget your passcode, and have to erase your phone at some point in the future,
at least you’ve got a backup to get you up and running again quickly.
So there you go, that’s what to do when you forget your iPhone passcode, along with some tips
to help you out in the future. Oh, and if you’re enjoying the content here,
consider checking out my mailing list, the Proper Weekly, where I share some tech news,
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channel for more content like this in the future. See you on the next video.