Accounts · 6 min read
Android, death, and Google’s Inactive Account Manager
Google does not hand a surviving relative the passcode. It can hand them some of the account — if it was set up.
Inactive Account Manager is Google’s analog to Apple’s Legacy Contact. It has to be configured in advance.
Without it, Google’s account recovery for deceased users is a documented process with a death certificate, and it still may not unlock the phone. Factory Reset Protection remains until the account is recovered or the device is released.
A reset of the phone without the Google account gets you a brick that asks for that account on first boot. Do not do that as a first move.
If you can still unlock the phone, export photos and 2FA now. The legal path is slower than a hard drive you already copied.