Too many pin and passwords and I forgot the Pin for the Restrictions setting on our family’s iPad. Apple used to store it clear text in the iTune backup, but now its just slightly harder to find.
This is for iOS 7+ and in my case 9.3.X and using iTunes on a Mac
Backup your iDevice.
Navigate to /Users/YOURACCOUNT/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/DEVICEBACKUPFOLDER
Where DEVICEBACKUPFOLDER will be a 40 randomish character string – There will be a DEVICEBACKUPFOLDER folder for each backed up device.
If you do not see the /Library/ directory, select the “Go” tool bar menu and then press and hold the “Option” key; it should toggle/show a “Library” option you need to select.
Find and open the file 398bc9c2aeeab4cb0c12ada0f52eea12cf14f40b in TextEdit
You will find the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>RestrictionsPasswordKey</key> <data> zm+4u+x37mZZb4wxEJxcYKNqvfo= </data> <key>RestrictionsPasswordSalt</key> <data> ZOsf/w== </data> </dict> </plist>
The two data values will be different for your device; this is the stored pin. I did not change the values in the above; I set a temporary key to use in this example so you can test this yourself.
Go to Recover iOS7+ Restrictions Password and copy and paste the PasswordKey data string, this the above case: zm+4u+x37mZZb4wxEJxcYKNqvfo=
and copy and paste the PasswordSalt data string: ZOsf/w==
and select “Search for Code.” It will attempt to brute force all possible code combinations until it finds a match; this could take a while to grab a coffee. In the above case, pin it will find should be “1111”.