How to · 10 minutes
How to reset a garage door opener
Hold the learn button on the motor unit until the light beside it goes out — about six seconds. That erases every remote, keypad and car button paired to it, and you then pair the ones you want back. It is the right move after buying a house, losing a remote, or if the door has started opening on its own.
What you need
- A stepladder
- Every remote and keypad you want to keep
4 steps
Doing it
- Gather everything you want to keep working before you start.This erases all of them at once. Anything not re-paired afterwards stops working.
- Press and hold the learn button until the LED beside it goes out.
- Re-pair each remote: one press of learn, then the remote button, within thirty seconds.
- Re-enter your keypad PIN the same way, and reprogram the car button last.Cars take the longest and are easiest to do when everything else is known good.
Where it stops being yours
If it will not clear, or clears and will not re-pair, the logic board is failing. On an opener over about twelve years old, replacing it usually beats repairing it.
More how-to
Also asked
When it does not go to plan
Will resetting wipe my remotes?
Yes — a full reset clears every remote and keypad the unit has learned, which is the point of doing it. Have every remote and the keypad code to hand before you start, not afterwards.
Reset or reprogram — which do I need?
Reprogram if one remote has stopped working. Reset if the opener is behaving strangely as a whole, if you have moved into the house and do not know who else has a remote, or if the travel limits have drifted. A reset is not a fix for a mechanical fault and will not make a heavy door light.
It resets and the door still will not close fully.
Then it is not a memory problem. Either the down limit needs setting or the safety sensors are stopping it — and a door that stops and reverses at the same point every time is almost always the sensors or something in the track at that point.