Hi, all -

I've had an iPhone 11 for a little while (since early summer). I just reset my passcode about 3 weeks ago.

By default, my phone was originally to lock after 5 minutes. Due to injuries and severe illness, I've been confined to my home except medical appointments. Since there was almost zero risk of anyone getting into it, I decided to change the setting for the phone to never lock (yes, go ahead and shame me -- I guess I was lazy for not wanting to type in a passcode).

You can further shame me for not backing things up (photos, contacts etc.). I do back things up from my desktop PC, but I procrastinated backing up my iPhone.

A few days ago, I removed a couple of apps, installed a couple of new ones, and turned my phone off and restarted it. I was too late realizing I had forgotten my new passcode (SMH); I had not fully memorized it. I tried a handful of passcodes after writing down possibilities, but none of them were correct. I eventually hit the 10-attempt mark, which permanently locked my iPhone.

Consulting Apple's website, as well as others, it appeared that if I wanted to reset my phone, I would unavoidably face losing my data -- everything would be erased. I then ran across a few results from googling the issue, which claimed there was a way to reset my phone without losing my data.

One looked particularly promising; it required iTunes to be installed on my desktop PC. I installed it, restarted my PC, and then connected my iPhone via USB. The instructions said I would see a message saying that an iPhone in Reset Mode was detected, but that did not appear.

It is heart-wrenching to contemplate losing family pictures, my contacts, conversations involving employment, etc. Is there ANY hack in the world that will allow me to reset my iPhone without losing everything, or to transfer data without having to unlock it? If I were rich, I'd offer a huge reward to anyone who has such info. But thank you for reading, anyway.

David G.