How to unlock your Samsung smartphone without your lock screen password

We’ve all been there. You’ve forgotten your lock screen PIN or password can no longer get into your smartphone. If you own a Samsung device, there is another way. Here’s how to get back into your phone without having to jog your memory.

Naturally, option number one should be your first point of call. If you can unlock your device without resetting it, that’s a huge plus. If you have a very recent backup and don’t mind erasing all of your data to later restore it, then options two and three could be the way to go.

To unlock your Samsung smartphone remotely, you need to check a couple of things are in order first. Your phone must be connected to a Wi-Fi network or mobile network, so if you don’t have a SIM card in it or are not in a wireless internet zone, you won’t be able to use this method. Secondly, you need to activate your Samsung account. Samsung prompts you to do this when you first set up the phone. If you’ve set up Find My Mobile on Samsung though, the process is very simple:

1. Head to Samsung’s Find My Mobile page from a web browser.
2. Sign in to your Samsung account with your ID and Password or using the Google sign-in button.
3. On the right-hand side where the options are, click on More.
4. At the very bottom, you will see Unlock My Device.
5. Type in your Samsung account password and then click Unlock.

If your device is not connected to the internet, was never registered to your account or if you have also forgotten the password to your Samsung account, it’s time to move onto more drastic measures.

If you can’t unlock your phone with Samsung Find My Mobile, you will have to reset your device to get back in. Erasing your phone is not the end of the world if you have a recent backup. It can even give your device a new lease of life by clearing out some of the junk that has accumulated on it. To reset your Android smartphone, including Samsung phones, from another device, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Android’s Find My Phone page.
2. Sign in to your Google Account.
3. If you have more than one phone, click on the one you want to erase.
4. Click Erase to remove all the data from the smartphone, including the lock screen password you have forgotten.

There is a way to reset your smartphone and erase all the data without having to get into the Settings menu – which you can’t do if you’ve forgotten the password. You will need to reboot your Samsung smartphone in recovery mode first, and then erase all of the data on it from there.

An important thing to remember is that Google has had a security feature in Android since Lollipop that requires you to sign in to a Google account that was on the phone before it was erased. This is to prevent smartphone thieves from being able to simply wipe a phone from recovery mode and start from fresh. If you had multiple Google accounts on the phone, signing in to any one of them will work. If you need to erase your Samsung phone using just the buttons on the side, follow these steps:

1. Turn off your smartphone.
2. Press and hold both the power button and the volume up button to enter recovery mode.
3. Navigate by using the volume rocker to move up and down the menu and the power button to select an option.
4. Go to Recovery mode and then Wipe data/factory reset and then Yes to confirm.
5. Once it has finished, reboot your phone the normal way and sign in to a Google Account to get started.

Did these tips help you get back into your smartphone? If not, let us know about your problem in the comments section below and we’ll do our best to help you. What’s your top tip for remembering passwords?