What to do if you have forgotten your smartphone’s password, PIN or pattern?

Smartphones are one of the most important devices in today’s time, ad they make our everyday life easier. Smartphones store lots of our personal data and in a way, they know more about us and than even our next-door neighbours. So it becomes extremely important to protect the smartphones and the data they hold. For that, the smartphones come with several features like lock screen, PIN, passwords and so on. But what to do if you forget about your password, pattern or PIN? It can be really frustrating as there aren’t too many options that are left after that.

Here, we are listing down the steps and methods about what to do when you forget about the password, PIN or pattern to unlock smartphone:

For Samsung smartphones:

If you have a Samsung smartphone and you lost your password then there are few things you can do to open your smartphone. Every Samsung smartphone asks the user to create a Samsung account, and if you have activated the Find My Mobile during the setup then the process will be easy. Here are the steps by which you can unlock your Samsung device:

1. Open the Find My Mobile website on your PC or laptop or any other device and log in with your Samsung account which is logged in on the smartphone.
2. Once logged in, you will see your current smartphone at the upper-left corner of the webpage.
3. On the right side of the page, you will see the ‘Unlock my device’ option. Click on it.
4. You can then unlock your Samsung smartphone remotely by entering the password of your Samsung account.

For devices running Android 4.4 KitKat or earlier version of Android

The smartphones running the Android 4.4 or earlier are easy to open if you have forgotten your password.

1. Type the wrong password 5 times in a row.
2. After that, you will be taken to a new prompt which will show the following options – Forgot pattern, Forgot PIN, Forgot password.
3. Then you need to tap on the type of password you forgot. Once done, it will ask you to enter your Google’s username and password. After entering the details, click on Submit.
4. After that, you will be taken to the prompt to change our PIN, pattern or password.

Using Find My Device

Find my device is a great way to locate and reset your phone’s password. If your smartphone is running Android 5.0 Lollipop or later versions of the OS then you can use Google’s Find My Device. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Visit the Find My Device website from your PC or laptop and log in to your Google account.
2. Then you can choose your device displayed on the upper-left corner of the page.
3. Once there, you can click on Erase device. It should be noted that in the later version of Android, resetting a phone’s password, PIN or pattern is hard. And even Find My Device can’t let you reset it. You can only erase your device and set a new password after it boots up.
4. Before the erasing starts, you will be asked to enter the Google details once again. Enter it and clock on Submit.
5. After that, your smartphone’s data will be erased and you will need to set up a new password, PIN or pattern.

Factory Data Reset

Almost every smartphone today running the new Android versions gives the user to reset the device if they somehow forgot their password, PIN or pattern. But sometimes, there is no option and you will have to wipe it clean from the recovery mode menu. Here are the steps to do it:

1. You can enter the recovery mode by pressing the Power button and the Volume Down button.
2. Then you will be taken to the Recovery Mode of the device.
3. There you will be given many options. Choose Wipe Data/ Factory Reset.
4. You will be asked to enter your Google account’s username and password.
5. Once done, click on Reset to completely wipe the phone and start afresh.