How To Use Find My iPhone – 2016
Today I’m going to show you how to use Find My iPhone. I’m going to show you what it is, how to set it up, and how to locate a lost or stolen iPhone.
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What is Find My iPhone?
Now the first thing we’re going to discuss is what is Find My iPhone? According to Wikipedia, it’s an iPhone “app and service provided by Apple Inc. that allows remote location tracking of iOS devices.”
In short, if you lose your iPhone, iPad, iPod or MacBook, the Find My iPhone app is going to help you find it. Let’s dig in and I’m going to show you how to set it up.
How To Set Up Find My iPhone?
From the home screen is tap on Settings.
Now we’re going to scroll down and tap on iCloud (If it asks you to sign in just type in your Apple ID and your password). If you don’t have an Apple ID, just tap on ‘Create a new Apple ID’ and you’ll be guided through the process.
What we want to do now is scroll down to Find My iPhone and toggle it to the On position. Now Find My iPhone is enabled.
You’ll also want to turn on Send Last Location because if your battery gets critically low (whatever that means to Apple), it’s going to store and actually send the last known location of your iPhone to Apple. So say for instance your battery dies after you’ve lost your phone, when you sign in to Find My iPhone to locate your iPhone, it’s going to show you where it was last located before the power went out.
Now that we’ve got the app enabled, we want to make sure that we set up some extra added security. If you haven’t done this, make sure that you have either your Passcode or Touch ID and the Passcode enabled.
To do that go to Settings, click on Touch ID and Passcode. Make sure you’ve got one set up because this will restrict access to your iPhone if someone were to find it.
You can also Share Your Location with your family members from this setting as well. In order to do that, go back to Settings, click on iCloud, set up Family Sharing and now you can use the Find My iPhone app to help find your family members’ iPhones or other iOS devices.
How To Locate A Lost or Stolen iPhone
Open up the Find My iPhone app from any iOS device or go to iCloud.com and sign in using your Apple ID and password. It will now begin locating your iPhone (if you have not allowed access already, you will be asked to allow Find My iPhone to access your location while you’re using the app).
On an iOS Device just tap on the iPhone icon and you’ll bring up an actions menu at the bottom of the screen where you can get turn by turn directions, play a sound (great for locating your iPhone when it’s just missing nearby).
You can also put your iPhone in ‘Lost Mode’. Lost mode is going to let you lock your iPhone and then track it as well so you can protect all of your contact information. While in lost mode, access to Apple Pay will be suspended until you find your iPhone and sign into iCloud. You can Erase this iPhone if you have lost all hopes of finding it. Once you erase the entire of contents of the iPhone, it can’t be located or tracked.
Once in lost mode, you can enter a contact phone number that will display on the home screen so that hopefully some will call that number. You can even display a message on the iPhone, again displayed if someone finds your iPhone.
Your iPhone is going to be locked so they won’t be able to gain access, but they’ll still be able to see this message: “This iPhone has been lost, please call me.” Click done after you choose the stock message or edit your message and you’re officially in Lost Mode.
There you have it, that’s how to use Find My iPhone. I want to give you a gift, it’s 21 iPhone privacy and security tips: a checklist for to make sure you always keep your iDevice secure. Again it’s absolutely free, my gift to you. Click here to get yours.
Let me know what you think about the Find my iPhone app in the comments below, have you ever had to use it? If so, did you ever find your iPhone?