How to unlock an Android phone using adb if you know the password

This blog post explains how to unlock an Android phone using adb if you know the password. This can be useful if the touch screen of your phone is broken.

If you don't know the password, try any of the 9 methods in the article http://joyofandroid.com/how-to-unlock-android-phone/ instead.

Prerequisites:

• You have a computer running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.
• You have a USB cable with which you can connect the phone to the computer.
• USB debugging has been enabled on the phone. You can enable it in the Settings / Development menu (but you need a working touch screen for that).

1. Install the adb command-line tool. It's part of the Platform SDK Tools SDK package. First download the Android SDK, then run the tools/android GUI tool, select Platform SDK Tools and install. The adb binary will be downloaded to platform-tools/adb .
2. On Linux, follow these steps to make sure that your user has the permission to access the phone.
3. Don't connect your phone yet to the computer via USB.
4. Run adb devices and verify that it doesn't see the phone.
5. If not enabled yet, enable USB debugging on the phone, in the Settings / Development menu.
6. Connect the phone to your computer using an USB cable.
7. Run adb devices and verify that it sees your phone.
8. You will have to run the following two commands very quickly, i.e. faster than the screen blanking time on the phone.
9. Run adb shell input text PASSWORD, replacing PASSWORD with your Android unlock password.
10. Run adb shell input keyevent 66 to simulate pressing the Enter key. (See this page for event codes of other keys.)