Most of DNI’s that are in circulation are DNIe, that is, they include a digital certificate that you can use to authenticate and operate with the Public Administrations with the same guarantees that if you were doing it in person. However, one of the difficulties that it has to its use is that the PIN they give it to you in a paper, and if you lose it or you do not remember it, many users do not know how to unblock the DNIe. Today we tell you how to unlock DNIe quickly and easily.
It would seem silly, but in more than 58 million of DNIe issued in Spain, unlocking them can be a task to the order of the day. In the official page of the electronic DNI, there is only a brief mention of the procedure, which is why from viafirma, we have decided to explain you better how to unblock your DNIe in a simple way.
The first thing you need to ask yourself is, if your DNI is actually blocked or not.
Have I blocked my DNIe?
Not remembering your pin, means that you have necessarily blocked your DNIe, you have up to 3 attempts before the lock is effective. If you are a Windows user, in the official website of the electronic DNI you have a tool that checks if your DNIe still has available some attempt to enter the access PIN. This is the link.

If on the other hand you are not a Windows user, you would not have to find out how many attempts you have left, so if you do not remember the PIN and need to use your DNIe, you have to proceed as if you were to unlock it, following the guidelines marked on the portal official of the electronic DNI in Spain.
Unlock DNIe

As you can imagine, without the PIN, for your own safety, you need to go to the nearest police station so that you can authenticate yourself through your fingerprint and thus be able to proceed with the unblocking of the DNIe and its corresponding change of PIN. The good news is that you do not need to take an appointment for this procedure, nor wait in a line.
Once in your police station, go to the terminals enabled for the change of PIN and procedures related to the DNIe and follow these simple steps:
- Introduce our DNIe.
- You will be ask for the password, but we will opt for the option “I forgot my password”.
- Immediately afterwards, the terminal will ask for our biometric identification, that is, through our fingerprint.
- To do this, we just have to follow the steps that will indicate the terminal and we will conclude by indicating a new password.

Remember that the PIN must be an alphanumeric combination that must contain at least 8 characters. As you know, avoid using your date of birth or combinations of data that are in the DNI, to increase the security of it.
The uses of the DNIe go much beyond the authentication in the Electronic Administrations, since as it is shown in the portal of the Electronic DNI it allows you to:
- Submit documentation
- Interact with Public Administrations
- Signature of Documents with full validity
- Identify yourself
- As a means of certifying the integrity of a document
Besides if you already have the new DNI 3.0, this acts as a passport for those countries that allow it. Likewise, thanks to its NFC technology has greatly increased its usability and operations that allows development. That is why viafirma mobile, already supports the DNI 3.0 for Android.
We hope this article has helped you and we’ll be back next week.