Silly mistake - forgot pattern lock - out of options?

[edanto]

Yesterday I set a pattern lock on my FP2 (latest standard FP OS)…and today I have forgotten the pattern. Fairly stupid. I believe my only option is to reset the phone or remember the pattern.

From googling; there was a method in older android to reset a pattern through google account but thats no longer possible. USB debugging in not enabled on my phone, that rules out another option. It’s android 6, so can’t crash the lock screen.

I’ve found a webpage that lists methods and seems to sell a dodgy looking software to unlock. I am nervous to trust that software or even download it. Is it a legitimate approach?

https://drfone.wondershare.com/unlock/bypass-android-lock-screen.html

Maybe I am judging them too harshly because of website translation.

Would anyone have a strong view for or against this dr.fone tool?

[freibadschwimmer]

USB debugging in not enabled

You can try to flash the custom recovery to get ADB access, which might work (afaik it ignores wheter you have USB debugging enabled in Android or not).
If you have su installed and root access, you can delete the lock files (see, for example, method II or V) to access the phone again. (Just had to hack my phone myself today in the same way)
If you don’t have root, you could still try to flash the community boot.img to get root, though I am not sure if it would need to be enabled in Android. Anyhow, I think its worth a try

[Amber]

Hmm, I wouldn’t trust arbitrary Software to download and execute. Basically these mostly use rootkit methods. Who knows what else it does and what remains afterwards?

I thought you should be able to unlock your phone via Google Device Manager, when you have given Google all rights on your phone (I believe it is usually activated this way). But not sure if it really works out that easily this way.

[edanto]

Android Device Manager is no longer an option; it can remotely reset pattern locks only for phones of Android 4.4 or lower.

I’m resigned to resetting the phone; it won’t take too long to get it back to normal.

That said, I am curious to see if I can attempt any of the methods listed online (without downloading mysterious ZIPs or EXEs) to break the pattern lock, and will put a little time into it.

[quote=“freibadschwimmer, post:2, topic:29542,”]
You can try to flash the custom recovery to get ADB access…[/quote]

My android tech level is fairly low, I don’t know what ADB is; so I’ll google the basics and see how it looks to me.

Looking at TWRP for FP2, one method needs root and the other mentions USB debug mode, so I may be out of luck, but I can give it a shot.

If I do get ADB access, maybe the simplest option to try is method 5 here
http://techsomniac.com/bypass-lock-screen-android-phone-password-pattern-face/

Solution For Everyone Via Adb – File Removal :

INSTRUCTIONS:
=>Type This Command In Your Terminal (CMD Prompt) :

    adb shell rm /data/system/gesture.key

=>If You See The Gesture Pattern Grid Or Password After Restarting, Don’t Worry. Just Try Any Random Pattern Or Password And it Should Unlock.

Anyways, I’ll be careful. I know that messing around in this area can brick the phone. All advice is appreciated.

[freibadschwimmer]

ADB you will need to get working on your computer. With most Linux distros this is fairly easy (sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot), other OS may need a bit more effort (see here for a tutorial, or for example for Windows).

With ADB & fastboot in place, you can flash the above mentioned TWRP (fastboot flash recovery TWRP-filename.img), which might be already enough to give you access to change the above mentioned file. Yet, Rather than deleting, I would recommend to rename the file, so you could put it back in place if necessary. Thus, instead of rm /data/system/gesture.key it would be better to use mv /data/system/gesture.key /data/system/gesture.key.bak (which only renames the file to /data/system/gesture.key.bak).

So basically the main step would be to get ADB/fastboot running on your computer. This I would recommend any user of an Android device, because it can help so much with troubleshooting, but also for backing up and copying data, as well as for installing software (custom ROMs or OS updates).

[edanto]

Thank you for the suggestions. Before you had posted it, I already decided to just wipe the phone and start again (I’ll only lose a few hours of Whatsapp messages).

I have an older Samsung running Android 5 which I can try the steps above on, as a learning project.

[edanto]

As above, ADM was not an option beyond Android 4.4 for this. Issue solved a few months ago.