Find My iPhone

If your iPhone or iPod touch has been lost or stolen, it's not necessarily gone for good. If you set up Find My iPhone before it vanished, you may be able to get it back (or at least keep the person who has it now from accessing your data).

Today I’m going to talk about how to use the Find My iPhone app. In this article I’ll illuminate,

• What it is
•  How to set it
• How to use it
• What to do if your iPhone is offline

 Find my iPhone is an app and service provided by Apple Inc. that allows remote location-tracking of iOS devices and Mac computers. This is a free service that's part of iCloud, which uses your phone's GPS and Internet connection to help you locate it on a map and take certain actions.If you lose your iPhone, iPad, iPod or Mac this free tool help you get it back. And, even if you can't get it back, you can prevent a thief from getting at your personal data.

                                                                                                  

How to setup Find My iPhone

What you’ll need to do this are,

• An iCloud account
• Find My iPhone set up on your phone before it was stolen or lost because there's no way to turn on Find My iPhone once the phone is gone.
• A web-connected computer or device           

To setup Find My iPhone first go to Settings from home screen and then select the Apple ID,iCloud,iTunes & App Store then tap on the iCloud. Then scroll down to Find My iPhone. You can see it is in the off position.

      

     

So we can turn it on in next view. And also we want to turn on Send Last Location. What that’s going to do is, if my battery gets critically law It’s going to store and send the location of the iPhone to Apple when that battery is law. It means your battery dies and you lost your phone, once when you sign back to locate your iPhone it’s going to show you where was last located before that power went out. 

                                  

    

So now Find My iPhone is enabled. Now we want to make sure that we set up some extra added security. Before that make sure you have either your passcode or touch ID and the passcode enabled.

To do that go to settings click on touch ID & Passcode and then make sure you’ve got one set up.

Another thing you can do on here is that you can share your location with family members as well. In order to do that go to settings > Apple ID, iCloud, iTunes & App Store > Set Up Family Sharing. So now you can use Find My iPhone to help find your family members iPhones or their iOS device as well.

How to Use Find My iPhone to Find or Erase Your Phone 

 There's  a Find My iPhone app  (link opens iTunes) that you can install on another iOS device to track yours but in this article I'm going to show you how to use the web-based tool, though using the app is pretty similar.

• As you have already set up Find My iPhone service on your device before it was stolen, Now go to https://www.icloud.com/  in a web browser. 

• Log in to iCloud using the account you used when setting up Find My iPhone.

•  Click on Find iPhone.

• Then again you have to enter the password for your AppleID. Find My iPhone immediately begins trying to locate all the devices you have it enabled on.

•   If you have more than one device set up for Find My iPhone, click All Devices at the top of the screen and select the device you're looking for.

• Now it shows the location of the device using a green dot. So you can zoom in or out of the map, and view it in standard, satellite, and hybrid modes, like in Google Maps. When your device is found, a window appears in the right corner of your web browser. It lets you know how much battery your phone has and offers a few options. 

Click Play Sound. This is the first option because sending a sound to the device is best when you think you've lost your device nearby and want help finding it.

You can also click Lost Mode. This allows you to remotely lock the device's screen and set a passcode (even if you hadn't previously set up a passcode). This prevents a thief from using your device or accessing your personal data.

If you don't think you'll get the phone back, you can delete all data from the device. To do this, click the Erase button. You'll see a warning (basically, don't do this unless you're absolutely sure you want to). Click the box that says you understand what you're doing and click Erase. This will delete all the data on your phone, preventing the thief from accessing it.If you get the device back later, you can restore your data from backup.

If you think your device is on the move, click the green dot representing your phone and then click the rounded arrow in the pop-up window. This updates the device's location using the latest GPS data.

If your iPhone is Offline???

Even if you have set up Find My iPhone, your device may not show up on the map. Reasons for why this may happen include that the device:

• is turned off or out of battery
• isn't connected to the Internet
• Has had its Location Services disabled.

If Find My iPhone isn't working for whatever reason, you have a handful of options:

• ​Check the Notify Me When Found box. Find My iPhone will let you know when your device next connects to the Internet so you can find it.
• The three options – Play Sound, Lost Mode, and Erase – are available. Use whichever you want and the next time the device is connected to the Internet, the option you picked will happen.
• Choose Remove from Account if you've sold or given away the device and don't want it to show up in Find My iPhone anymore.

Was this article helpful to you? Feel free to comment below about your own experiences and thoughts on this article. :)