Setting up a PIN code or pattern to unlock your Android phone is a crucial security measure if you want to protect your data and keep your messages and photos safe from prying eyes.
But what do you do when Android does not accept your PIN or pattern although you know you’re using the correct one? There are plenty of reports about PIN codes or patterns that suddenly stopped working one day. While this is very frustrating, rest assured, you’re not the only one experiencing this problem.
If the Android OS does not recognize your PIN code anymore, stop after the second attempt. Entering a PIN code that the system no longer recognizes as being the correct one will block your phone and you’ll need to use the PUK code.
Luckily for you, we did the heavy lifting work and we found a few solutions to this problem.
Fixing an Android Phone That Doesn’t Recognize the Correct PIN or Pattern
1. Reboot your phone
Maybe this is only a temporary glitch. Try waiting a few minutes. Many users confirmed the phone unlocked all of a sudden without them doing anything.
You can also restart your phone. Press and hold down the Power button until the Restart option appears on the screen. Tap Restart and wait until your phone reboots.
But don’t enter the PIN code or pattern as soon as your device has rebooted. Wait one or two minutes and only then check if the phone recognizes your PIN or pattern.
2. Use your Google credentials
Use this solution if your phone is not accepting your unlock pattern. It is worth mentioning this method usually works for Samsung phones and only if there’s an active Google account signed in on the device.
After making a series of incorrect patterns on your phone (at least 10), you should be prompted to enter your Google account username and password to unlock the phone.
2. Factory reset your phone from Recovery Mode
Recovery Mode is a useful built-in troubleshooting option that can help you to fix your Android phone.
While the steps to follow to enter Recovery Mode may be different depending on your phone model, you should be able to enable Recovery Mode by using the instructions below.
Keep in mind that factory resetting your phone will delete all the data on your device. Don’t forget to back up your data before proceeding.
- Turn your phone off
- Press and hold the Volume down and Power buttons at the same time until your phone turns on
- Use the Volume down button to navigate to Recovery mode
- Use the Power button to select it
- Once you’re in Recovery mode, hold the Power button, and press the Volume up button once
- Release the Power button now
- Use the Volume down button to scroll down to Factory reset
- Use the Power button to select this option.
If this method didn’t work on your phone, go to your phone manufacturer’s support page for detailed instructions. Or you can contact directly your phone manufacturer’s support team and have them help you troubleshoot this problem.
As you can see, there is really not much that you can do if your phone is not accepting the correct PIN or pattern. If you’re not lucky enough for this glitch to go away by itself after rebooting your device, you need to enter Recover mode and factory reset your device.
Madam M says
A mini heart attack because of this trashy Samsung A32 android 13 software update. I updated it last night and this morning my phone kept going on and off even on charger. Soon after that drama, the incorrect pin drama started. Well, I took advice from here to press the – button and power button at the same time and the phone rebooted. Waited 5 mins before I could enter the pin and it opened. I will be giving it a break from passwords for the day. And next time, before updating my phone, I will remove passwords.
Most importantly, tomorrow I am going to get an iPhone
Antonella says
Same. Motorola G200. Yesterday stopped accepting my correct pin and started labelling it as wrong. The phone did not recognise the fingerprint either so I had to reset to factory preset. Which is annoying as I have to reinstall everything, from work VPN dual access to banks and messagistic. In years on Android it never happend to me and I am very disappointed
ANNOYED AF says
I am having the same problem. The original issue was my phone randomly freezing then rebooting several times throughout the day. Now after one of its random reboots it won’t take my pin number after entering the SIM unlock pin. I am very annoyed with this phone and thinking of switching to iphone. As this is my replacement phone i haven’t even had a year.
Ron Morris says
My Android phone is LOCKED with a password NOT a PIN.
Does anyone know why please,
When I slide to open, it say,
Enter password to open.
Your password is at least 4 characters and at least 1 letter?
Any ideas please, This is the 10th day I’ve been locked-out.
Thank you Ron.
UncleJack says
Hmmm…. I think I have an inaccessible tablet.
Former employee left it in a drawer for about a year. Plenty long enough for the battery to fully drain off.
We don’t have his PIN.
My overly ambitious MDM profile prohibits me from factory resetting from the recovery console.
The clock is so out of sync that WiFi is unable to negotiate a WPA connection, so I can’t just pull the profile..
Yanique says
At this very moment i am having the same issue my screen lock not accepting the pin and it’s correct. I try all the video on YouTube that shows me how to hard reset it but nothing working and it is really frustrating. F127G/Ds Samsung galaxy .
Coco says
This happened to me just now!!! And I’m a bit relieved to see that I’m not the only one who experienced it. I started to doubt myself if I remembered my pattern correctly but no I knew I was right because I’ve used the same pattern for 3+ years now and suddenly it won’t accept it. I’m forced to factory reset my phone now because of it Such a hassle.
Chhay says
I has the problem too in the last night, tough I know my pattern is right it’s also not accept, it’s work in long time and not always I mean it accept for sometime not always, I don’t recommend u guys to restart the phone if u still have fingerprints if u restart it’s will need pattern before fingerprints ( sorry for my stupid English )
Toni Bergman says
Waiting for 2 minutes made my mom’s phone finally accept the correct SIM1 PIN CODE.
She had to use PUK code every time until now.
Once we waited for 2 minutes, I disabled SIM Lock and all is good.
We thank you.
Ashley says
Phone stopped accepting pattern the other day. Did factory reset… asks for pattern which it still will not accept.
Not impressed anyone have some ideas
John R & Son says
Same story here, count me as 1 more unhappy Android user. Son forgot his pw, had been using fingerprint until the phone was reset & then asked for pw. We did not enable the ‘find my phone’ feature, nor does it appear there is any Google account running, since we never receive a link to try an alternate method. After hundreds of attempts, the phone lock ‘wait” time went from 30 sec, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, now at 8 minutes … is there no end in site? Hard Reset seems to be the *only* solution for us – please verify. Thank you.
~ Future iPhone customer
john says
None of this is working, my Samsung stopped accepting my Pin to unlock my phone. It accepts the Pin it to start the phone, but after it boots up, it rejects the pin to unlock the screen. Very frustrating.
Not getting any error after 10 tries, and the instructions for the factory reset arent working, it just does a regular reboot. FML
Raul O says
My wife’s OnePlus 8T has same problem. It has Android 11.0.11.11.KB05BA. Suddenly camera, FPR and screen pin stopped working. We have tried so many things. Now we have entered pin more than 70 times and we have to wait 480 seconds between each attempt. It is so strange that calls are coming in, we can answer but SMS are not coming in. NFC is not working anymore. We can turn on Wifi and 4G. We have restared and waited 10 minutes before have entered pin but nothing. Only hope is that we try to drain the battery to zero. Let’s see what happens. We no longer even see our device in the Google Account list.
Wezie says
wtf with the android now? i have same problem and it wont fix even restart. i dont want to restore coz i have lots of files will be gone if i do.. any working method here to fix this?
Libby says
I have a Moto g7 power and my father decided to factory reset it (without consulting me first) and once I got back on my phone, I tried to restore any backed up information (I had very important Google tabs), but it needs my pin to do so. The pin won’t work. Is there a way I can fix this?
Malcolm Anderson says
I am having same problem as Frances Stoker.. Samsung phone with Android and EE not locked but not accepting passwords for my various accounts. Tried them on other devices and they are OK.
Eric says
I have a Nokia 6 that has just stopped accepting my PIN, can’t even get it to work after reboot, how do I recover this phone?
FRANCES STOKER says
My phone is not locked, it just won’t accept correct passwords for other accounts. How can I correct this?
cool girl says
Yes it worked thank you so much i really appreciate the help
Ugh says
It just happened to me on a Huawei M5 tablet. Normally it’s unlocked using fingerprint, but it needs the PIN code every 3 days. So it asks for it after a lock, and no matter how many times I enter, it’s always wrong. There are no option for alternative methods too. So I rebooted it, and it didn’t ask for a code to reboot. After the reboot, it asked for the PIN, and suddenly my normal PIN works again. It’s definitely a bug, and it’s still here on a fairly new device with updated firmware.
aleli says
I already tried this option with my phone, unfortunately after the step ” clear cache” you have to click on the “clear data” option then it will still ask for the lockscreen password before it can proceed to clear data on your phone. Since it does not recognize my password I can’t do anything right now. Do you have other options for this case?
naveen says
thanks man you saved my day
Vinay says
My phone is asking the pin to reboot,not asking any Google info even if I type the pin wrong for 20 times please I want a dolutios
Rey says
Hello, my phone will not accept the pattern to even do a restart.
Maxim says
This has helped, my Samsung S8 did not accept PIN code on restart, but after following first advice, I waited for 30 seconds and it accepted.
Vicky says
Hi, All I am also having the same issue on my Redmi Note 8 Pro, Even after entering correct password it is displaying Your phone has been blocked. I am having very important data please suggest if anyone found a way to fix the issue.
debil says
This problem occurs to daily and it only stops when i restart my phone, then it comes again the next day.
Weronika says
I did manage to save myself from factory reset. Luckily, when my Huawei Mate 10 Lite (Android 8.0.0) stopped accepting correct pin, I was still able to unlock my screen with fingerprint. Then I re-installed Intune Company Portal app that had administrative access to some data on the phone. Solved the problem (this time).
berpoint says
Has anyone found a solution for this? Factory data reset is not an option for me. I have many things on my device that I don’t want to lose.
Chance says
This might help I’ve been trying to add another account to google but it keeps saying try again when I know am right because I change the password when it doesn’t work multiple times.
Cy says
Thank you to the person who said to hold the power and volume button down for a good ten minutes or more, as it finally reset itself. So frustrating to read suggestions to Turn Off or Restart when the stupid thing insists upon a pattern to do it.
Allan says
Having the same problem with my girlfriend’s Huawei P20 Lite. Yesterday I set a lock screen PIN in order to use an app which needed that active, and literally 10 seconds after setting it, it wouldn’t unlock, citing an incorrect PIN! Predictably I’m now having to wait an hour between attempts… What’s worse is that we hadn’t got round to setting up any backup options, so precious photos are stuck on there (and I really don’t want to go down the factory reset idea because of that).
Hmmmm.
Steven says
This is unacceptable. Woke up to my phone no longer accepting my PIN. I’ve had the same PIN on this device for well over a year and there’s NO WAY I’ve entered it wrong multiple times. What’s worse, Google’s Find My Device won’t connect to the locked device for me to reset the PIN with a temporary passcode. Even worse than that, I can’t restore the backup from the locked device to an alternate device because it needs the PIN, whit it won’t recognize, to do so. And, to top it all off, Recovery Mode and Rescue Mode are unresponsive.
senaja9167 says
So I have been dealing with a similar issue myself for the last couple of days. I have Redmi 9 Lite, MIUI 12 and Android 10. My phone started not accepting the my *correct password* all of a sudden. I was shocked first, tried to reboot and enter the PIN again, but no result. After 5 attempts, it makes you wait for 30 sec. Then, after 5 more attempts, it makes you wait for 30 secs again, and after these 10 initial attempts, you have to wait for 30 secs for each “wrong” attempt. After some more attempts, each “wrong” attempt starts costing you 60 secs, and this probably even increases more. What I also noticed is, at some point, the lock screen camera option disappears, all the incoming calls loses their name tags and only numbers are shown, and also, while entering the password/PIN, a new “Enter the password to unlock the device” kinda text starts to appear with animation, in addition to already appearing “Enter password” message.
So at this point, I decided to wait for some time, thinking of contacting the technical service to see if they can provide any help, before I factory reset. I was also thinking that this could just be a security measure against a brute-force attack, where an attacker just keeps trying all possible combinations of passwords to enter the device, and I thought like MAYBE this security measure is preventing the attacker for a certain amount time to enter the device even if the correct password is entered. So I started waiting and did not enter any password on my device for 27 hours straight. I was actually thinking of not entering anything for a total amount of 72 hours at first, but by mistake, as a “reflex”, I wanted to play some music on my phone and mindlessly entered the password, and then I immediately regretted that decision because now I had to wait for another 72 hours again…. but to my surprise the device was unlocked! I was like wtf, and I immediately went to the developer settings and turned the USB debugging option on, before the device locks itself again. I wanted to get rid of the lock screen password as well, but to do so, you are asked to enter your password first in the settings menu, so I didn’t wanna risk it. Then, by connecting my phone to my PC, using adb pull command on ADB, I was able to copy all my important data to my PC, which was a huge relief.
However, after the phone got locked again when the screen switched off, it only accepted the correct password entry once more, and then started rejecting it again, which is like a second wtf moment… And now, I will be factory resetting my stupid phone and backing-up my data every week (as I should have done in the first place) and hoping that this messed up thing doesn’t happen again.
Overall, I think this might really be a serious bug in Android 10, since it is happening to so many people. Damn.
Rebecca Carter says
It isn’t my android phone that isn’t accepting the pattern Lock everything I use the pattern for works except when trying to sign into google recovery password.and that is the only reason I set the pattern Lock up
Chris says
I am using my phone as a mobile hotspot. It won’t accept my correct pw, but it’s still giving me internet. Great security.
Nichole L Eckenroth says
Been having problems with my A11 maybe 4 months old. Slow texting, for about a month. not recognizing pin pattern, can’t reboot…,…..
Anon says
This has happened to me twice once with Redmi and the second time with OnePlus nord, it sucks both time i had to erase my data cos it didn’t have Google signed in account. I hope they fix it soon. I knew I’m gonna once again so i ended up in this page i didn’t knew that people are facing these problems too i thought something is wrong with my phone cos i some apps.
StacyL says
My pattern stopped working on my tablet. The device won’t let me turn it off WITHOUT ENTERING THE PATTERN. Now what?
Rabie says
In case this helps anyone, i faced the same issue this morning and after a few mini heart attacks that happened as i realized that the factory reset was going to be my only option, i managed to solve the issue thanks to the Find My Mobile feature (which i had thankfully enabled in the settings a few months ago). I went to findmymobile.samsung.com and after logging in with my samsung account i unlocked my phone through the website which basically deleted all the security settings related to the locking/unlocking of the phone.
So yeah if you didnt enable the feature prior to the issue happening this method wont work.
JesusO says
And i was just blowing my head off because I didn’t understand what was going on with my phone.
Gladly and yet sadly, found this page to notice this is a new problem what samsung brought to us, and yeah my phone is 3 years old and you can’t imagine how many things i have in there.
Lea says
I have Samsung Note20 5G and experiencing the same issue. I just got it last December. I’ve tried all the said solutions, nothing works.
Maven says
Currently happening to me too.. on BOTH my Oneplus and Pixel phones running the latest software..
Megha vyas says
I am having redmi note 8 pro device… suddenly it happened that my phone is not recognising correct password and there is no option unlocking phone with google account. Now all i can do is erase data and start :(
Ivana says
No. I see no solution offered. Just more of the same problem reported.. I am trying not t despair. Two days ago I was robbed in front of the entrance to my building – my handbag gone with my LG phone. The presently blocked REDME was my back up, and I see no solution offered here! What else can go wrong? (Except the lockdown, curfew, the untested vaccine I don’t want etc.)
Hammad says
I’m facing the same issue, I dont understand why dont they fix it :\
Sara Sadeghi says
Helllo.
I just had the same issue. But, I feel this happened as a result of installing the BC service Card Mobile Card. That was the only change I had. Only a day after, suddenly my PIN swas not working.
Melisa says
Hi all, This happened to me now as well. Has anyone found a solution that works yet? After I followed the instructions above it did not even accept my fingerprint log in, which was still working before I followed these instructions.
daniel says
Please help, i have the same issue on my huawei Nova. Suddenly correct pin is not working after reboot. I don’t want to loose any data from my phone.
Sabrina says
My Samsung J3 Achieve 2018 pattern stopped allowing me access the beginning of the second week of November. Spoke with a number of technicians and sales people, even a technician at .Samsung in Palo Alto included. Finally got a Samsung rep on the phone to “admit” that an update for security issues “may have” been the culprit, knocking out the software that recognizes the pattern. My phone is two years old and have thousands of photos on it. I don’t give a crap about the phone or corporate bs, I just want my photos/vids/docs. Anyone want to do a class action?
Jeremy says
Just started getting this problem on my Huawei phone since upgrading from Android 9 to 10. Fortunately Restart solves the problem, and I am not aware of missing data. Also very slow response when typing – text takes several seconds to appear after pressing the keypad.
Sam says
It’s unbelievable that Samsung does not acknowledge this issue or provide a fix. Had this happen to a S9 and an S4.
Deborah says
Same thing happened to me right now! 12/24/2020. Samung Galaxy S5, Set the phone down for a minute, picked it up and phone will not recognize my pattern/pin. Now only recognized a zero! Ridiculous to do a factory reset! Pressing the power and volume button for 10 sec DOES NOT WORK. Nothing works!
Co says
So.. if you have the same problem, your phone does not recognize the pin and you cannot restart, shut down…just keep pressing the power and volume buton for 10 sec. Happened to me as well, very frustrating..
Jen says
$1400 phone and THIS is what I have to deal with?
Jennifer says
I appreciate your efforts here. I attempted the second step; however, there is no Google Account Option; once I reached a number of attempts it did not like, it stated the phone would be reset!
I recommend to all DO NOT USE THE RESTART option or else you will be forced to lose everything.
I’m going to plug the phone into the computer and hope I can still access everything to save it; otherwise, it’s a bummer at the moment.
CaveBatMatt says
Same issue here. Went to make food. Came back to my phone not accepting my pin. I know I’m entering it correctly.
Managed to access the battery. Disconnected /reconnected many times. Tried Rebooting without disconnecting the battery many times. Tried disconnecting USB cord/ reconnecting USB cord before and after boot.
Unable to access wifi options without pin. I was able to find the phone through my google account. But no options were provided to unlock it. Just to lock it and erase it. I’m trying to avoid losing data / pictures / etc.
Yudo says
Whoa it seems that previous comments happened last month, got stuck with same issue as well.
New bug?
Jahnvi says
I have the same issue going on. I can’t even reboot my tablet because it is asking me the pin for rebooting. I have no idea what to and I am a student who is stuck with online classes.
Mp says
How can I turn off or restart when it says I needed to put in the pattern inorder to restart or turn off!!
Kimberly A Wells says
NO it is my tablet that has the problem