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Bypass Apple Activation Lock

You can bypass the Apple Activation Lock feature and reactivate iPhones and iPads without the previous user’s Apple ID and password.

Requirements

  • The device is supervised.
  • You’ve turned on Activation Lock Bypass in Sophos Mobile Admin, and the device has synced with Sophos Mobile since then.

Activation Lock is an Apple security feature to prevent the activation of devices that are lost or stolen. When Activation Lock is turned on on a device, you must enter the previous user’s Apple ID and password to reactivate it.

If a user returns a device with Activation Lock turned on, and you don’t know the user’s Apple ID and password, Sophos Mobile provides two ways to reactivate the device.

Remove Activation Lock

If the device is still enrolled with Sophos Mobile, you can remotely remove Activation Lock.

  1. On the menu sidebar, select Devices.
  2. Open the device on which you want to remove Activation Lock.
  3. On the Show device page, select Actions > Remove Activation Lock.

    Sophos Mobile sends a task to the device to remove Activation Lock.

  4. When the task is complete, reset the device to its factory settings.

You can now activate the device without having to enter the previous user’s Apple ID and password.

Bypass Activation Lock

Suppose the device is already unenrolled from Sophos Mobile, for example because the user has reset it to its factory settings. In that case, you can reactivate the device using a bypass code.

  1. On the menu sidebar, select Devices.
  2. Open the device for which you want to bypass Activation Lock.
  3. On the Show device page, go to Device properties.
  4. In the property list, search for ActivationLockBypassCode.

    This is the bypass code.

  5. Turn on the device after you reset it to its factory settings.

  6. On the page where you must enter the previous user’s Apple ID and password, enter the bypass code, without dashes, in the Password field.

    Leave the Apple ID field empty.

  7. Complete the activation procedure.