Over years of bike commuting, I have come across many things laying in the street. When they are phones, I frequently find the owners by popping their SIM into my phone or if their phone is unlocked I can communicate with the incoming text messages to find the owner. Sometimes it gets tricky, the device can be disabled and then MDM-locked. Ugh. I just want to help someone get their phone back! I recently came across this situation for an old iPad 5th gen that likely would otherwise end up as e-waste, but using these steps got me back into the device:

If the main screen says the device is disabled and MDM-locked, try the following:

1. Plug the device into a computer.
2. Put the device in DFU mode (varies by device) and upgrade iOS to the latest version.
3. After the iOS upgrade completes, some devices refuse to download their MDM certificate. In this case I jailbreak the device and then bypass the MDM.
4. To jailbreak the device, I used palera1n.
5. To bypass the MDM, I used MDMPatcher-Universal

Jailbreaks for the latest iOS are likely to change, this site may recommend what to use to jailbreak the latest iOS. For the above-referenced iPad, iOS 16.7.10 could be jailbroken with palera1n and MDM-bypassed with MDMPatcher-Universal. Anyway, hopefully this helps you reconnect someone with their darn device, but it would be easier if people just put a label with contact information on the back of their device.

If the above MDMPatcher-Universal stops working, this project may be another option if development resumes.