How to Remove a Passcode from an Android Device
Someone forgot their Passcode
A client recently brought me an android device his kids had forgotten the passcode to. The device seemed to be a fake Samsung product. It was labelled Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge on the cover but it did not look anything like the real deal.
Someone forgot their password. I hate it when it happens.Â
After much searching on Google, there are several ways of doing this. However, I’m going to use the debugging mode. This method involves downloading the ADB toolkit and Mobogenie.
It is a lot easier to work with genuine brands due to ease with available documentation and drivers.
The steps involved
The first thing is to download Mobogenie and install it on your PC. When you connect the android device, it should automatically download the drivers.
Take note that proxy cannot be configured on Mobogenie. You need to have direct internet access especially for downloading the drivers.
Mobogenie made it easy to download the device drivers
The next step is to navigate to the ADB folder in CMD. The destination should be the location where the toolkit was extracted to. Type ‘adb devices’ to see if you can access the device.
Can you see the device?
Once the device has been verified, type the following commands
adb shell
This should take you into the root folder of the device and should look something like the picture below.
As a super user, you can delete the password and gesture key files.
Type su to change your administrative rights to super user [note: this is a Linux command]. Then type rm data/system/password.key
Alternatively, you can type rm data/system/gesture.key to remove swiping code or rm data/system/*.key to remove both.
For me, I like to navigate to the folders to verify the files before deleting them.
Once you have done this, reboot the device and you are in.
No more password, but make sure to remember it next time.Â
Disclaimer!
Now, if you are attempting to use this method then I will not accept any responsibility if you damage your device.
Resource links
To make it easier for you I’ve put the links to the resources used in this post below.
- ADB toolkit – ADB Toolkit
- Mobogenie – www.mobogenie.com
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