If a hair dryer isn’t available, you can try another heat source. Leaving it near a hot stove, open flame, furnace, or in a steamy bathroom may encourage the adhesive to melt.

Try all the corners. You can usually find 1 that lifts away from what is underneath it. If none of them come up, heat the glass a second time to loosen the glue. If the glass is cracked near 1 of the corners, choose a different corner to prevent if from breaking into many smaller pieces.

Tempered glass is very thin, so it is prone to breaking. Broken glass leaves a lot of individual fragments you have to peel away by hand. The only way to prevent this is to be very cautious.

Any small, splintered pieces of tempered glass can be picked up the same way. Although they can be a little obnoxious, they will be easier to peel back than the main piece.

While you might be able to warm up the glass by holding it close to a match or lighter, you probably won’t be able to get the entire sheet to a consistent temperature and may damage the components beneath it. You can try heating up 1 corner to make it easier to lift.

Avoid angling a pointy toothpick downwards. If you’re removing tempered glass from a phone, for instance, you will end up scratching the screen beneath it. If you don’t have a toothpick available, you may be able to pry up the glass using another sharp item like a fork or with your fingers.

This works for cracked or smaller pieces of glass as well as whole pieces, but avoid pulling the glass up too far in 1 direction. Lift each piece at an even rate to prevent it from turning into a jigsaw of shards.

Make sure you use a hard, plastic card, such as a credit card, library card, or ID. You can often use a credit card to remove the entire piece of glass. If the piece of glass is larger than the length of the card, such as on an iPad, use your fingers to help lift the glass at an even rate.

Doing this with your index and middle fingers may be the easiest way, but you can use other fingers if you feel comfortable doing so.

If you can’t get a corner to stick, try another corner. Sometimes the corners can be stubborn because the glue underneath them hasn’t loosened enough. If you’re having trouble picking up a corner, heat the glass again. You may wish to choose a corner and focus the heat on it to ensure the adhesive weakens.

Sometimes the glass will splinter because 1 side came up faster than another side. This will leave you with some smaller shards you can remove with your fingers or with the tape.