How to reset the Django admin and superuser password

If you forgot your django admin/superuser password, there are multiple ways to reset it. We will go over them. If you lost your username, then we will find that back again as well.

Find your username

If you already have your username, then skip to this part. On your server or localhost, start django shell:

python manage.py shell

Up next, we can find out what usernames are used for admins with this:

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
list(get_user_model().objects.filter(is_superuser=True).values_list('username', flat=True))

If you have changed the username field, then please change it above as well to whatever default username field is. You will now get a result similar to this:

['hello@djangowaves.com']

If you get multiple results, you have multiple superusers. Pick the one that you want to change the password from.

Reset your Django admin password

Open up Django shell if you haven't yet (python manage.py shell). Then copy/paste this:

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
def reset_password(u, password):
    try:
        user = get_user_model().objects.get(username=u)
    except:
        return "User could not be found"
    user.set_password(password)
    user.save()
    return "Password has been changed successfully"

That's the function we will use to change the password of a user. Up next, you can simply do:

reset_password(username, password)
# example: reset_password('hello@djangowaves.com', 'averysecretpassword')

Obviously, change the username with the username of your superuser account and change the password with something you want to use as a password.

Please note that if you do not have the username field as the username, then change it in the function above. Specifically, change this:

user = get_user_model().objects.get(username=u)

To this (if you use email as the username):

user = get_user_model().objects.get(email=u)

Let me know in the comments below if you still need help with resetting your Django admin password.

Written by Stan Triepels

Stan is professional web developer working mainly with Django and VueJS. With years of experience under the belt, he is comfortable writing about his past mistakes and ongoing learnings.