On the face of it, Apple’s Find My iPhone feature does what it says. If you lose your iPhone, you can identify its last known location by looking in the Find iPhone app or on the iCloud Web site, and you can make it play a sound. It’s great for tracking down a missing iPhone, whether you misplaced it in the house or left it behind at a restaurant. But Find My iPhone does much more! For starters, it works with nearly any Apple device. You can use it to locate a missing Mac, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch, and even AirPods. Find My iPhone also helps protect your data if a device is stolen. It even works with Family Sharing to locate devices owned by anyone in your family—a boon to any parent with a forgetful teenager. You must turn on Find My iPhone before your device goes missing!
- In iOS, tap Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Find My iPhone and enable Find My iPhone. (On the iPad, it’s called Find My iPad.) Also on that screen, turn on Send Last Location. That way if you don't discover that your iPhone is missing until your battery goes dead, your iPhone will use its last bit of battery to report its location. Finally, go back to the main level of Settings, tap Privacy > Location Services, and make sure Location Services is turned on.
- On the Mac, open System Preferences > iCloud and select the Find My Mac checkbox—if you see a Details button beside Find My Mac, click it and follow its instructions for setting necessary preferences.
Be sure to practice viewing where your devices are located and playing tones on them so you’ll know what to do if a device goes missing. Find My iPhone has a few tricks up its sleeve for when you want a device to show a message or if you think it was stolen:
- Lost Mode: When invoking this mode for an iOS device or Apple Watch, you’ll be asked to enter a phone number where you can be reached and a message. After that, Lost Mode will kick in as soon as the device is awake and has an Internet connection. Anyone who tries to use the device will see your message along with a place to enter the device’s passcode. If you get it back, you can enter the passcode to dismiss the message and use it normally.
- Lock: Available only for the Mac, the Lock feature enables you to protect an entire Mac with a 4-digit custom passcode. You can also enter a message that will appear on the Lock screen. This is a good choice if you think you’ll get your Mac back but would prefer that nobody mess with it in the meantime. Note that if you lock a Mac, you can’t erase it, as discussed next, so lock it only if you think it can be recovered.
- Erase: Even if your device has an excellent passcode or password, you might worry that a thief will access your data. Fortunately, you can erase your device. Erasing cannot be undone, so try other recovery options first. An iPhone running iOS 15 or later or an iPad running iPadOS 15 or later can still be located with Find My after erasure. Earlier versions lose that ability. Do not remove a stolen device from Find My, even after erasing it, because doing so removes Activation Lock.
- Activation Lock: Turning on Find My also enables Activation Lock on supported devices, helping prevent someone else from reusing a lost or stolen device. Protect your device passcode too: Apple allows it to remove Activation Lock in some supported flows. On an iPhone with iOS 17.3 or later, turn on Stolen Device Protection before the phone goes missing. It requires Apple Account two-factor authentication, a device passcode, Face ID or Touch ID, Find My, and Significant Locations. It adds biometric checks without a passcode fallback for certain actions, plus a security delay for some account changes. By default, these extra checks apply away from familiar locations; choose Always under Require Security Delay to require them at familiar locations too. These protections reduce risk, but do not guarantee that a stolen device or its data is safe. If you get the device back, you can restore your backup.
Try locating a missing device promptly. On supported iPhones with Find My network enabled, Find My can locate the phone for up to 24 hours after it is turned off or up to 5 hours in power reserve. This relies on remaining reserve power; it does not mean a fully depleted battery can keep reporting a new location. But even if you are unable to retrieve a lost device, you can prevent others from accessing your data or taking over the device.