I have the iPhone5 and I can’t remember my restrictions pass code? How can I recover that? Also, when I go to the App Store & do a search none of the searches will open. Just a blank screen. How do I fix that or could that have to do with the restrictions pass code? Everything else on my phone works accept the App Store
A little birdie tells me that it’s likely that it’s actually a parent who has set the content restrictions code on your iPhone 5, somehow. It’s set through Settings > General > Restrictions and, sure enough, one of the restrictions that can be set on an iPhone or other iOS device is “Installing Apps”, which is what I imagine you have set on your phone.
You can also check to see if you can delete apps: If not, then the “Deleting Apps” restriction is set too. Helpful if you’re the parent wanting to constrain what your child does, but not so helpful if someone else has set this on your phone and it shouldn’t be set up (which means, yes, it’s a pretty good prank, though annoying)
As you can see in the screen capture below, apps can also be screened against their rated content level too, so if you want to let a child download apps rather 12+ or lower, but not 17+, that’s easily done:
If you search for an app that fails the restrictions test, however, it generally shows the app information, just greys out the “free” or paid download button, so that might not be what’s wrong with your own App Store problem. I’d still check, though.
Now, in terms of resetting or circumventing the entire parental restrictions system in iOS. The answer? It’s not a pretty one: you’ll need to actually wipe and restore your entire iPhone, something that’ll require a Mac or PC because you want to use iTunes as the centerpiece of the action.
To do this, and again, your iPhone will be wiped completely and be blank when you’re done, plug your phone into your computer then look in iTunes for the device. Click on it, then go down to the section labeled “Version”, where it’ll show:
Make sure you’ve done a sync and backup (just click “sync” and let it finish), then click on “Restore”. It’ll check to ensure that’s what you really want to do:
It’ll take a while – sometimes as long as an hour – to fully restore a phone after a wipe, then you’ll find you need to recopy all the music, movies, photos, etc, from your computer. Once it’s done you should be back online without any of the hassles of the restrictions.
Oh, and if you only have your phone and don’t mind having to redownload everything, you can also initiate a restore by going to Settings > General > Reset (very last choice) and choosing “Erase all Content and Settings”:
Again, be warned, it’ll completely wipe your phone as if you’d just bought a new one at the store.
Hope that helps!
Thank you so much for this information! My phone just did this on its own. I’m the only one who uses my phone & didn’t have previous issues with adding or removing apps. I no longer even have the App Store on my iPhone 5. I really don’t like the thought that I now have to do a tremendous amount of work for something I didn’t do or cause! Augh! Just wanted to put this out there to see if anyone else has had this issue.
If you forgot your restrictions passcode and need to reset the whole system, the “Erase all content and settings” doesn’t work! You need to enter your restrictions passcode to do that, and that is what I wanted to reset!!!!!!!!!!!!!