
Don’t be tempted to pick something connected to you, like your birthday, or, heaven forbid, your bank PIN.

The storming of the Bastille was in 1789, - make that your passcode and remember ‘Bastille’. Alternatively, you could pick an event in history. Pick 1704, and you’ll only have to remember ‘Auntie Doris’. Say, for example, Auntie Doris who you only ever swap Christmas cards with was born on the 17th of April. If you struggle to remember numbers, one compromise you could try is choosing a memorable date, that has no close connection to you. Try not to make it too obvious - the temptation to choose something simple to remember like ‘1234’ is overwhelming, but it really negates the point of having a passcode in the first place.

If you choose the change option, it will ask you for your old passcode first.

Choose ‘Turn Passcode On’ or ‘Change Passcode’ as appropriate - but there are no shortcuts here. Just go to the settings screen and look for Touch ID and Passcode. If for some reason you didn’t sort it during set-up (perhaps you clicked ‘skip’, or realised that ‘0000’ was a really bad choice for a code), don’t worry, it’s dead easy to choose one later too. If you’ve had to reset your device, you’ll be invited to choose a passcode when you rerun setup. Once that process is complete, you’ll have a box-fresh iPhone, with no passcode set. Your phone will then start to download iOS from scratch, and reflash itself. You’ll be asked whether you want to restore or update. Connect it up, and when they register as connected, force restart your phone, whilst plugged into the computer. This is the more draconian method, and you won’t get a chance to create a fresh backup, so again - backup often, or you’ll regret it later. Pick the most recent backup from the relevant device and select it. You’ll see a list of backups of all your devices. When you’re asked, select ‘Restore from iTunes backup’. Unplug your device and start the setup process. When iTunes has finished syncing, click on Restore iPhone (the same could apply to an iPad or iPod Touch, by the way).

Before you do anything else, trigger a fresh backup - we want to preserve as much data as we can. Assuming that all is going well, your phone and iTunes will sync automatically.
