Unable to disable passcode lock on iOS devices

By Jesse Hollington @jhollington ● Friday, November 11, 2011

Q: I have an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4S. They are both logged into the same iCloud account. I currently have a passcode lock on both. I want to take the passcode lock off, but it won’t let me. The option for disabling it isn’t highlighted. It’s this way on both the iPad and the iPhone.

- Daniel

A: iCloud does not enforce any password policy restrictions, but if you’ve setup your iOS devices to also use a Microsoft Exchange or Google Sync account, there are likely password policies remotely enforced by either your company’s Exchange or Google Apps servers. In this case, the only way to remove these restrictions is to remove these services from your device. You can also try contacting your Exchange or Google Apps system administrator, but it’s likely that this is part of a company-wide policy.

If you are not using Exchange or Google Apps, the other possibility is that you have somehow installed a configuration profile on your device that may be enforcing password restrictions. You normally have to do this specifically, however if your device(s) were setup by a company or school, they may have added these profiles. You can see which, if any, profiles are installed on your device by going to Settings, General and looking for the “Profiles” option at the bottom.

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In some cases you can remove profiles from this screen, but if they are part of your organization’s security policy, they have probably been configured to require a password for removal, in which case you’re basically stuck with them unless you know the password to remove them.