WHAT TO DO IF YOU FORGET YOUR PIN, PASSWORD OR ANDROID UNLOCK PATTERN?

It is not uncommon for Android smartphone users to set up a passcode which can take the form of a lock PIN, pattern or password to protect their device. These three security methods are on the one hand excellent complements to more modern tools such as fingerprint detection. Some consumers also use one of these three tools to avoid submitting confidential information to Google., including their fingerprints, face modeling or iris.

However, it can happen that the owner of the smartphone forgets his access code.

There is a method that allows you to reset your access code to Android: you must proceed with the total erasure of the data of the device. For this, it is necessary to carry out what is called a hard reset . By performing this operation, all of the data contained in the internal memory of the smartphone is lost. Those stored on the microSD card are however kept.

How to restart your Android smartphone in recovery mode?

To restart your smartphone in recovery mode, you must follow the following steps:

• completely switch off the smartphone;
• turn on the smartphone in recovery mode as follows.
• For a Samsung, turn on the smartphone by pressing the “Volume up”, “Home” and “Power” buttons , and release the Power button when the Samsung logo appears .
• On a Huawei smartphone, you must turn on the smartphone using the “Volume up” and “Power” keys only.
• For owners of an HTC device, you must have previously disabled the Fast boot function , then start the device using the “Volume up” and “Volume down” keys . You must then navigate in the menus and choose “Boot to recovery mode”.
• At Sony, you will have to press the volume up or down button several times when the LED lights up when the smartphone starts up. Sometimes you will need to unlock the bootloader. The procedure is explained on the Sony website .
• The combination to achieve for Xiaomi smartphones is to keep the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons pressed, with the smartphone off, until the Mi logo appears.

How to hard reset from recovery mode on Android?

Once the smartphone is restarted in Recovery mode, the manipulation is almost finished:

• all that remains is to choose the “Wipe data / factory reset” menu, and validate this choice using the Power button;
• when the reset is complete, you must select the “Reboot System Now” option to restart the device.

With this manipulation, the code, password or pattern for unlocking the screen is permanently deleted. . This is also the case for all data contained in the internal memory of the phone.

How to change your Android lock code, pattern or password without erasing smartphone data?

Android smartphones generally offer three ways to lock them, in addition to fingerprints and facial recognition. This is the pattern, PIN code or password. This PIN code should not be confused with the PIN code of the SIM card.

In all three cases, it is possible to forget them, or to make a mistake during their initial entry. The smartphone is then blocked. Solutions which do not require resetting the device then exist. However, there are prerequisites for this manipulation to be successful.

Use ADB and USB debugging to remove password file

There is a method to remove PIN, password or screen lock pattern on Android. It is slightly more complex to achieve. To do this, you have to go through ADB, for Android Debug Bridge. It is a tool for communicating directly with the smartphone by command lines. To take advantage of it, you must first enable USB debugging.

How to enable USB debugging on Android?

To enable USB debugging, the protocol to follow is simple:

• in the smartphone settings, go to the “About phone” menu;
• you must then find the version number of the Android software , which is usually found in the “Software Info” submenu;
• by clicking 7 times in a row on the version number, sometimes called build version, developer mode is activated;
• a new submenu then appears in the parameters: “Development options”;
• in this menu, it only remains to activate the USB debugging.

How to use the ADB tool to reset my Android access code?

Once USB debugging is enabled, that’s the end of the first big step. You must then go to your computer, and download Android Studio. The ADB tool is available in this software, downloadable at this address:. It is also possible to download only the tool for entering command lines in the “Command Line tool only” part of this same web page.

It only takes a few steps to finally successfully remove the password, PIN code or pattern preventing access to the smartphone.

• connect the smartphone to the computer with a USB cable;
• launch the ADB command window from the installation directory;
• type “adb shell rm /data/system/gesture.key”;
• press enter to validate the command line;
• restart the Android device;
• the smartphone is accessible for a limited time, during which it is necessary to define a new PIN code, password or pattern .

This extremely effective method remains however reserved for fairly informed users. It requires the installation of software, the activation of developer mode and USB debugging. Unfortunately, it often happens that these solutions which do not delete user data are not applicable. In this case, there is only one solution left: resetting the smartphone on Android .