How to fix “you did not sign in correctly or your account is temporarily disabled” in Magento 2

In Magento 2, the error “You did not sign in correctly or your account is temporarily disabled” is one of the most disturbing error because it happens even with a fresh installation of Magento 2. You will see this error even when you typed user name and password correctly. Some users told me that they even see this error after resetting the password.

I found out that there’re many Magento 2 users encounter this error but they couldn’t find a working solution. In this tutorial, I will explain everything about this error, the cause of the error and how to fix it. (currently working with Magento 2.1.x, Magento 2.2.x, Magento 2.3.x, Magento 2.4.x)

Cause of the error

This error occurs due to Magento 2’s security system. Magento 2 will temporarily disable accounts that do not meet it’s password complexity requirements.

By default, in Magento 2, the password that meets security requirement must consist of:

• Uppercase letters
• Lowercase letters
• Digits
• Special characters
• Minimum of 8 characters in length

(we can change this rule later in backend)

The error happens because the default admin password you set when installing Magento 2 didn’t meet system’s requirement => The system disabled the account for security purpose.

Solution

#Method 1: Unlock admin account

Connect to your server using ssh protocol and use the following command syntax to unlock admin account

Assuming that your magento 2 folder is located in /var/www/html

cd /var/www/html

php bin/magento admin:user:unlock YOUR-ADMIN-USER-NAME

This command will also unlock your disabled admin account because of multiple incorrect login attempts 

If you suceed, the output message from Magento 2 system will be:

The user account "magentip" has been unlocked

Now you can log into Magento 2 normally

#Method 2: Reset admin account password/username

With Magento 2 CLI command, you can also reset account login credentials or create a new account.

To create a new admin account use this syntax

bin/magento admin:user:create --admin-firstname="magentip" --admin-lastname="demo" --admin-email=magentip@gmail.com --admin-user=magentip --admin-password=Qwe@123456

Change the following information

• admin-user: Your admin username
• admin-password: new password (should be at least 7 letters with upper+lower cases, number,  symbols)
• admin-email: your admin email
• admin-firstname: first name
• admin-lastname: last name

If you suceed, the output will be:

Created Magento administrator user named magentip

Now you can login to Magento 2 with the newly created account and change password of your “faulty” account

You can also change password of the existing account using that command.

For example, the email/username of the account that you cannot login is magentip and magentip@gmail.com => the syntax we use to update password of this account should be:

bin/magento admin:user:create --admin-firstname="magentip" --admin-lastname="demo" --admin-email=magentip@gmail.com --admin-user=magentip --admin-password=Newp@ssword

With –admin-password= “your new password that meets security requirement”.

Using that syntax will change your old password to Newp@ssword, which is eligible. Now you can login to Magento 2 normally without seeing the error: You did not sign in correctly or your account is temporarily disabled

Note: if the account does not exist, Magento will return this message:

Couldn't find the user account "magentip"

You will need to double check account details

#Method 3: Changing admin password using Mysql command

Go to PHPmyadmin on your server and select your Magento 2 database.

After that use this syntax to change Magento 2 password using Mysql command

SET @salt = MD5(UNIX_TIMESTAMP());
UPDATE admin_user SET password = CONCAT(SHA2(CONCAT(@salt, 'NewP@ssword'), 256), ':', @salt, ':1') WHERE username = 'Yourusername';