If your iPhone won’t unlock and you see the message “iPhone is disabled,” you might be worried that there’s a serious problem with your device. However, the problem probably isn’t as bad as it seems. If your iPhone (or iPad, or iPod touch) is disabled, this article will explain what’s happening and how to fix it.

Regardless of how your iPhone, iPod, or iPad got disabled, it’s relatively easy to fix it. It’s the same set of options you follow when you forget your passcode. The downside is that you’ll have to restore your device.

There are four main options for repairing a broken iPhone, iPad, or iPod:

Restore iPhone from Backup. The first step you should try is to restore your device from a backup using iTunes. If you no longer use iTunes, there is a way to restore from a backup without iTunes. Restoring your phone can fix the disabled phone issue, but you will lose any data that was not included in your last backup.