How Many Attempts to Unlock iPhone Before It Is Disabled?

The popularity of iPhones has its dark side – those practical and valuable devices are often a target for theft, which is why it’s highly recommended to use some type of screen lock. On the other hand, this can become a problem if you forget your new passcode or a friend or family member changes the combination without telling you.

To deter unauthorized access and prevent someone from guessing the password through trial and error, you only have a limited number of tries before the device becomes permanently locked. Aware of this, some phone owners are petrified of making a mistake that could lead to a serious data loss.

In reality, you have quite a few chances to get your password right. Even if you end up disabling your iPhone due to too many incorrect entries, there are still a few things you can do to remove the lock and restore access to the device.

How Many Attempts to Unlock iPhone?

Some people think that iPhone will immediately become disabled if you type in the wrong password, but that doesn’t happen after just one mistake. In fact, the phone will behave completely normally during the first five attempts to unlock it, and will only start becoming unresponsive for a limited time after that. In other words, even if you miss five consecutive times you won’t run into any problems.

• Following your sixth error, the phone will be locked for 60 seconds. While this doesn’t seem serious, every mistake after that brings you a step closer to disaster.
• Your seventh failed password trial will cause a five-minute lock, while this time will increase to 15 minutes should you miss once more.
• Wrong attempt 9 will keep the phone off limits for a full hour, while the 10^th attempt is final and if you don’t get it right the device becomes permanently disabled. Even worse, all data could be erased from the device if that security feature was turned on.

However, it’s possible to get around this problem and revive the device with the correct recovery procedure.

How to Unlock My iPhone After Too Many Attempts?

If your iPhone becomes disabled because of too many attempts to enter a wrong passcode, you have 4 different methods that can successfully unlock it again.

Method 1. Unlock Your iPhone 

As mentioned before, if you have tried to unlock your iPhone but failed too many times, your iPhone may become disabled. And in this case, you should make use of some special iPhone Unlocker tools to take the last try. Among the most welcomed iPhone Unlocker tools in 2021, we highly recommend AnyUnlock – iPhone Password Unlocker. No matter your iPhone is disabled or not, you can use AnyUnlock to get rid of your screen passcode.

Free install the latest version of AnyUnlock and take the following steps to get your iOS device back to normal.

Step 1. Launch AnyUnlock on your computer > Tap on the Unlock Screen Passcode on the welcome page.

Step 2. Connect your locked or disabled iPhone to the computer > Click the Start button to initiate the process.

Step 3. Check the device model shown on the interface and download the corresponding iOS firmware.

Step 4. Tap on the Unlock Now button when the download completes.

Step 5. Then AnyUnlock will start to unlock your iPhone. Wait for a few minutes and you will see the following page.

Method 2. Use Recovery Mode to Access the Device

Entering the Recovery mode is an effective way that can help you access a locked phone, but only if you have a PC with iTunes installed on it. This method will essentially wipe the phone clean and return it to factory settings, so all data that wasn’t backed up will be lost.

1. Start by connecting the iPhone with your computer using a USB cable, and run iTunes on the computer.
2. Quickly press and release the Volume Up button, then the Volume Down button, and finally the Power button on the iPhone. This should initiate the recovery mode on all iPhone 8’s and later models.
3. iTunes connect screen will pop up, and you will need to indicate whether you want to update your phone or reset it to factory settings.
4. Select the Restore iPhone option and click Done, and the screen lock will be removed from your device.

Method 3. Unlock Your Phone with iCloud

iCloud online service provides an alternative way to get back in control if you forgot how many attempts to unlock iPhone you had and ended up disabling the smartphone. For this approach to be successful, your phone must have the option Find My Phone activated and you need to know the Apple ID password used to log in to iCloud.

Assuming those requirements are met, you should access the iCloud account from another Apple device (i.e. Mac computer or iPad).

1. Click on All Devices in the Find My Phone screen, and choose the locked iPhone from the drop-down list that appears.
2. After you select the device, click on the Erase iPhone icon in the right lower corner.
3. While this operation will delete the data on the phone, you can get it back from your iCloud backup once you are able to turn on the device again.

Method 4. Access Locked Device with iTunes

Some iPhone owners regularly sync their devices with iTunes, and they might be able to unlock a disabled phone without any loss of data if they react promptly before new sync is made.

1. Turn on a computer and start the iTunes software on it. After that, you should plug in the disabled iPhone into the computer with a USB cable, prompting a pop up window to appear after iTunes recognizes the device.
2. Choose the iPhone from the list, and click on the ‘Setup as new iPhone’ button, and then on Restore.
3. This will cause the phone to attempt to run backup and syncing procedures, but if you cancel both of them you can remove the lock from the phone and gain access to it again.

The Bottom Line

Apple devices can be locked out by entering a wrong password ten consecutive times, but even if this happens there are several possible solutions. Depending on which syncing and security options were active at the time of the accident, you could use AnyUnlock introduced in this article to get around the lock and continue using your iPhone and all the apps.