What to do if your Nuki lock won't open: what happens behind the scenes and your plan B

By GuestChat Team · 2 October 2026

A connected lock rarely fails, but when it does it picks the worst moment: with the guest standing on the doorstep. What makes the difference isn't that it never fails, but that the system tries properly, alerts quickly, and that you have a plan B.

What the system does when the guest presses open

Before giving up, the system reads the lock's state and acts on what it sees. If it's finishing a movement, it waits. If it looks jammed, it retries and tries to unjam it. It never sends a lock command unless it's sure the door isn't open. Only when there's nothing reasonable left to try does it give up and send an alert.

What the guest sees

No technical messages. They see a simple explanation of what's happening and what they can do:

If the lock is finishing a movement: wait a few seconds and try again.
If the command went out but wasn't confirmed: try pushing the door.
If it has lost its connection or is jammed: trying again won't help, and the team has already been alerted with urgent priority.

The alert appears in their language: instantly in Spanish or English, and translated for other languages.

How you find out

An automatic report in Reports, with the cause of the failure, so you know what's going on without decoding error codes.
If the lock goes offline, it's checked every few minutes, you get an email, and another one when it's back. You always get these alerts, even if you turn off email report alerts.
Low battery: it also opens a report with its own tag, Lock battery.

Your plan B, ready in advance

A backup keypad code. If you have a Nuki keypad, in Access Codes you can create a code by hand, valid for 48 hours, to give the guest if the button fails.
A temporary key for whoever is going to help: from Temporary keys you give access to the neighbor, the technician or your colleague until the time you choose, and you revoke it when they're done.
A physical key you can get to. Even when everything works, someone you trust nearby with a regular key will save the night when the lock runs out of battery.
The Emergency Contact filled in in the property profile, so the guest has someone to call.

Maintenance that prevents most failures

Batteries: change them when the alert comes, not when they die. Do it during a cleaning.
Connection: if you get a lot of offline alerts for the same apartment, check the signal of the lock and the router. It's more a problem of the spot than of the device.
Door alignment: if the door rubs or the latch is stiff, the lock jams. Adjusting the frame fixes more failures than any restart.

When it happens, in order

Reply to the guest right away. They already know there's a problem because the screen told them: what they need is to know there's a person on it.
Look at the report: the cause tells you whether it's the connection, the battery or something mechanical.
If you have a keypad and it works, give them a backup code.
If not, put the physical key plan into action.
Once it's sorted, mark the report as resolved and note down what happened.