The encrypted iPhone backup secures our data. What to do, however, if you forget your unlock password? Here's how to recover your data
Nowadays, the smartphone has become so deeply embedded in our lives that it has become a sort of "virtual treasure chest" of our most important data. For example, without even deciding to do so, your cell phone stores all the passwords of the websites you visit on your cell phone, the history of websites, the settings of all the Wi-Fi networks you use and, if you have an iPhone and an iWatch, even the data about your health.
To this data you can add those that you decide to store on your smartphone, such as your favorite music, the archive of your personal or work emails and so on. Because of the large amount of important data that your iPhone contains, it is a good idea to protect it with an encrypted backup with a good and strong password. In this way, even if your iPhone is lost or stolen, no one will be able to access your important data without knowing the password, and even if a thief would be able to break the password protection system, he would find a large amount of encrypted and therefore unreadable data in his hands.
But what happens if you lose or don't remember the iPhone backup password? The eventuality is not the most pleasant, because in that case you will have no way to recover the password but only to reset it to set a completely new one. The procedure is not difficult, but it goes through the deletion of many other settings.
How to reset backup password on iPhone with iOS 11 or later
To reset the backup password on your device with iOS 11 or later, you just need to go to Settings > General > Restore. Then tap "Restore" and enter your iOS password and follow all the steps to reset the settings. Settings like screen brightness, wallpaper or your custom Home screen will be lost. But all the passwords of encrypted backups will be removed, and this way, you can set them again by connecting your device to iTunes and creating a new backup with a new password.
How to reset backup password on iPhone with iOS 10 or earlier
If you have an Apple device with an earlier operating system, i.e. iOS 10 or even lower, you can't reset the password of encrypted backups. But you could still solve the problem by getting around it. If you have a Mac, your iPhone password might be saved in the Keychain. Otherwise, Apple suggests the following steps:
1) If another user has set up your device, ask them to provide you with the password used
2) Use an iCloud backup instead of iTunes. If you don't have an iCloud backup, you can create one
.