Nowadays almost every other person owns a smartphone which not just contains their call logs or text messages but private and credential information too. Most of the people have a credit card or other transaction information, personal pictures or even passwords for remembrance stored in their devices. All this type of data or information needs to be protected and hence, the most convenient solution to allow access to data to only the person who owns it or someone the owner allows are pattern locks which are most common in devices these days.
However, even though the pattern lock mechanism is quite convenient, it can cause inconvenience sometimes if the person forgets his/her credentials to open the device. In some cases, the person might end up losing data if they try to force remove the lock. Luckily, there are few methods using which one can remove forgotten pattern lock from their Android phones. This post discusses some of the methods to remove lock without data loss and some in which phone lock gets removed but data gets lost.
Method 1: Through your Gmail account
Android phones usually ask you to enter your Gmail address when you start the phone for the first time or when you try to use any Google service on your phone like search, play store, YouTube etc. This Gmail ID is normally saved in the device which can be used to open the phone in case pattern is lost. The option usually appears if you try opening the pattern lock too many times. With this method, all you have to do to open pattern lock is to enter your Gmail address and password.
Method 2: Hard Reset/Factory Reset Method
Hard reset or factory reset is done to reset the phone’s state to when it was first bought and before any personalization was done on it by the user. Hard resetting the phone is probably the easiest method to remove the lock but the downside is that you’ll end up losing the data. Follow the steps to hard reset the phone to remove pattern lock.
Step 1: turn off the phone/tablet.
Step 2: after it is completely turned off, press and hold the home button, volume up button and power button (all at the same time).
Step 3: A list of performable operations will appear on the screen, choose ‘factory reset’ or ‘wipe data’ option from the list.
Step 4: Reboot the device and your phone will reset.
Method 3: Use ‘find my device’
Google allows access to Android phones through other devices which can be used for our desired purpose of removing lock pattern from the phone or tablet. Follow the given steps to open the phone lock.
Step 1: Open Google’s ‘Find my website’ / application
Step 2: Sign in with the account you had on your locked phone and choose the phone
Step 3: Choose the option ‘Erase’ (this will erase the data and pattern lock), you’re all done.