How to remove Stolen Device Protection after your FaceID or Touch ID fails.
Stolen Device Protection was introduced to make it difficult for a thief who knows your iPhone Passcode to take over your phone, your account, and your data. It is set to make life more difficult away from your familiar places, and you can also override it to Always so that FaceID or TouchID (aka Biometrics) is needed wherever you are.
This becomes a problem if your biometrics fails, you cannot remove it and life becomes difficult for you! In a familiar place you can override the need for biometrics using Passcode, but that option is not available away from familiar places or when set to Always.
There is a way to get out of this mess. It requires to restore your phone in Recovery Mode. This completely wipes the phone. This means that unless you have a backup, or you use cloud storage like iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive, then you will lose all your data. You may be able to make a backup if the phone is still accessible.
If you do have a recent backup then restore it during then iPhone setup from the Hello Screen below.
Neither Activation Lock nor eSIM are removed by Recovery mode
Execute the following process to restore your phone using Recovery Mode
1.Turn off your iPhone
Press and hold both the side button and the Volume down button until the turn off slider appears.
Drag the slider to turn off your iPhone.
2.Put your device in recovery mode
Connect the cable to your Mac or Windows PC.
Next, connect the cable to your iPhone and quickly hold the side button. Do not release it.
Continue to hold the side button while the Apple logo appears. Do not release the side button until an image of a computer and a cable appears. You are now in Recovery Mode.
3.Restore your iPhone to Factory Settings with your computer as follows:
Mac:
Open the Finder and locate your iPhone in the sidebar under Locations. Select Trust [your device] on your Mac if necessary. Choose Restore when you have the option to Restore or Update. The end result is the Hello screen.
You might need to update your iPhone before you can finish restoring it, and this download can take more than 15 minutes to complete. If your device restarts during this process, turn off your iPhone and start recovery mode again.
Windows PC:
Open Apple Devices and select your iPhone in the sidebar. Select Trust [your device] on your Windows PC if necessary. Select Restore [device] and follow the onscreen instructions.
4.Follow the onscreen instructions to set up your iPhone:
After the restore process has finished, the Hello screen should appear on your iPhone. Disconnect your phone from the computer and then set up and use your iPhone.
During that process, if you have a backup you should choose to restore it, if not then set it up manually
When asked about setting up FaceID or TouchID now, tap set up later (it will not set up anyway if biometrics has failed)
You will be asked for your apple account and password, maybe credit card security codes, etc.
When restoration is finished, whether or not you restored a backup, the Stolen Device Protection will be turned off
