Bluetooth keyboard incorrect PIN or password - SOLVED

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Just in case this helps anyone else, I had a nightmare today with my Bluetooth keyboard and my Android phone - but I used some common sense and found a geeky solution.

In my case it was a ZTE Axon 7 running Lineage OS and a Microsoft Universal Folding Keyboard (UFK), but I suspect this cure will work for more general issues.

The symptom was that when I tried to connect a previously paired keyboard I first of all got just the raw Bluetooth address shown and not the keyboard name. And then, when I tried connecting, I got an "incorrect PIN or password" error message. No chance to reenter a PIN and no amount of restarting keyboard or phone would fix it.

The cure seemed to be to reset something in the phone's Bluetooth system, but what? The keyboard wasn't showing up as paired, so I couldn't 'forget' it.

I tracked it down in the end.

  • Settings, Apps, then 'Show system' on the '...' menu.
  • Find and tap on 'Bluetooth extensions'.
  • Tap on 'Storage' and then 'Clear data' and 'Clear cache'.
I then found that the keyboard's name showed up properly in the Bluetooth devices list and I could re-pair, being prompted for the PIN and being able to enter it successfully on the keyboard.

Just in case this helps anyone else!

PPS. Gratuitous shot of the UFK in use with my other smartphone, an Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro: 

Comments

Anomalous said…
Thanks for this. In my case I had to delete all the data from all the Bluetooth system apps, reboot and re-pair, but it works!
8:58 PM
Anonymous said…
many thanks. Your troubleshooting steps solved my Sony Headphones pairing issue with Nokia 7.1 phone.
I had the exact same error with "incorrect pin or passkey"

7:36 AM
Gary Mericano said…
Thank you, bro -- you saved me potential hours of frustration - on my phone (Orbic Wonder) it was called org.codeaurora.Bluetooth I believe. Also, after resetticing it several times it kept doing the same thing before I realized that got I just got a bt receiver/transmitter to plug into the AUX on my desktop a few days ago. I think that as soon as I put my keyboard into pairing mode it would engage the BT audio dongle and not let go. After I unplugged the power on that then reset data/cache again it paired just fine
10:43 AM
JT said…
It's a great keyboard. Thanks to you I bought one.
12:11 AM
Anonymous said…
Thank you times a million! I tried stuff from other websites and it wasn't helpful. This just helped make my morning! You've made this author who would like to plot her next book on her phone but has a long car ride very happy!
11:56 AM
Unknown said…
Awesome !! You helped me solve a problem with my Treks Titanium headphones. Thanks heaps ! Cheers Gary
12:14 PM
Anonymous said…
You beautiful person! you helped fixed my headphones with this, thank you very much :)
4:21 PM
Unknown said…
That did the trick immediately, thank you. Nice job.
3:07 AM
Anonymous said…
Brilliant, thank you, had been tearing my hair out but that did the trick with a Logitech K380 and a Moto 5GS! (my system didn't have an app called Bluetooth Extensions but only Bluetooth, but it worked)
12:47 PM
Anonymous said…
Awesome, thank you so much for documenting this for posterity.
6:59 PM
Fernando_K said…
Great! I was having a BIG problem when trying to pair my BLE keyboard to my Galaxy J7 metal, and now I got it. Thank you very much!
8:26 PM
Bob Thomson said…
I have a similar problem. My older Logitec Tablet Keyboard for Android 3 refuses to accept the PINs I send from my Tab5 Android 12 tablet. The tablet "recognizes" the Logitec keyboard which sends it a PIN which it then rejects.
9:14 PM
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