My older brother recently passed away, and I inherited his iPhone 16 Plus. It is protected by a six-digit passcode that nobody in the family knows. I've tried a couple of possibilities, but the phone now imposes increasingly long delays after incorrect attempts, and I'm worried about making it permanently unavailable. I contacted Apple and the police but haven't found a solution. I'm hoping to access the phone's contents, such as photos, notes, or other personal data, without erasing anything. What legitimate options are available?
2 Answers
Apple and authorized repair providers can’t remove the passcode while preserving the contents. Even with proof of ownership or a death certificate, they generally cannot unlock the device itself without erasing it. The best possibility is checking whether your brother’s photos, notes, or other data were synced or backed up to iCloud or another service, using Apple’s account-recovery process and the appropriate estate documentation.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to retrieve or bypass the iPhone passcode. The passcode protects the device’s encrypted data, so continuing to guess could eventually make the phone unavailable and require an erase. Avoid trying more combinations unless you are completely certain.
If the phone reaches the unavailable state, the only supported way to use it again is to erase and set it up from scratch.
An iCloud backup may let you recover some information, but it won’t reveal the passcode or provide access to data that was only stored locally on the locked phone.