Exit kiosk lockdown and recover the PIN

The native desktop and Android kiosk apps run in a locked fullscreen mode. They hide window borders, stay above other windows, and block common shortcuts for closing or switching apps. See Lock down the desktop kiosk. An operator can use a PIN-protected manager menu to exit the kiosk or change its settings. This page explains how to open that menu and recover a forgotten PIN.

The gesture is identical on every platform: five rapid taps in the top-right corner, each within ~1.5 seconds of the last.

On desktop with a hardware keyboard you can also press F12 five times in quick succession. F12 is absent from tablet software keyboards, so a customer cannot trigger it by accident.

The gesture does not unlock the kiosk. It only opens the Manager Access PIN prompt. Enter the manager PIN to unlock the menu.

Once the PIN is accepted, the menu opens. The available actions differ slightly between platforms.

Desktop:

Exit Kiosk — leaves locked fullscreen and returns to the desktop.
Change PIN — set a new manager PIN (minimum 4 characters).
Install update — shown on Linux only, when an update is waiting. macOS and Windows surface their own update prompts.

Android:

Change Printer — re-run printer setup.
Set as Home App — make the kiosk the device’s launcher.
Exit — leaves kiosk (lock-task) mode and returns to the Android launcher.

Android has no on-device “Change PIN” action — set or reset the Android PIN through your EMM (or by clearing app storage), as described under Recover a forgotten PIN below.

Too many wrong attempts

After several incorrect PINs, entry is locked for about a minute. On desktop the prompt shows a live countdown; on Android the wait time appears the next time you trigger the gesture. Wait for it to clear, then try again. This brute-force lockout is why the gesture being public is not a risk.

Recover a forgotten PIN

There is no self-service “reset PIN” button on the device — that would let anyone who reaches the prompt bypass the gate. Recovery is an administrator action, and the easiest path depends on the platform.

Android — push a new PIN from your EMM (recommended)

If the tablet is enrolled in an EMM, an administrator can reset the PIN from the management console without touching the device:

In the EMM, edit the Jonot kiosk app’s managed configuration.
Set managerPin to a new 4–32 digit PIN and push the policy.
The device picks up the new PIN on its next policy sync — no gesture or on-device step required.

You can complete this recovery in the EMM console. Setting managerPin to an empty value returns PIN control to the first-run setup on the device.

Without an EMM, clear the kiosk app’s storage in Android Settings. This returns the app to its first-run PIN setup. The person who set up the device must normally complete this step.

Desktop — administrator restores the PIN file

The desktop app stores a salted hash of the PIN in ~/.jonot/kiosk-pin-hash (under the kiosk account’s home directory). To recover, an administrator with access to that account deletes the file; the app returns to its supervised first-run PIN setup on the next launch. A corrupt or tampered file is detected and fails closed — the menu refuses to open and asks you to contact an administrator, rather than offering a reset that an attacker could abuse.

Where this is documented

This public page covers the escape gesture, the manager menu, and PIN recovery — safe to share with operators because the flow is inert without the PIN.
PIN values themselves live with the operator who provisions the device (or in the EMM’s managed configuration), never in these docs.