From the course: iOS 16: iPhone and iPad Essential Training
Use Find My
From the course: iOS 16: iPhone and iPad Essential Training
Use Find My
- [Instructor] As you're probably aware, iOS devices aren't exactly inexpensive. And if you keep a lot of sensitive information and important appointments on your device, misplacing or losing your phone can mean you're losing more than just your device. Fortunately, Apple offers a free service through iCloud called Find My. Find My is a great security measure to have in place, and since it's free, there's really no reason to not set it up because it offers you the ability to locate your missing or stolen device on a map, as well as perform many remote functions like passcode locking it or even completely erasing it all from a regular web browser. So let's take a look at how this works. On your iPhone or iPad, start by tapping Settings. Go to your account at the top. And here, locate Find My. If you subscribe to iCloud and have already previously set up your account, Find My iPhone should already be enabled. If you haven't signed in yet, be sure to sign into iCloud with your Apple ID. Now, also in the screen, you can make sure you've enabled devices to participate in the Find My Network. Now, what this is is in the past, your lost devices needed to be connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network in order to pinpoint their locations. But Apple created a way for devices to communicate with other nearby Apple devices over Bluetooth. So if your device is lost but someone carrying an iPhone or iPad comes near it, your device will transmit its location through that device, giving you a much better chance of finding it. So it's a good idea to leave this option on. And Send Last Location automatically sends the location of your device to Apple so you can look it up if your battery dies and you can no longer look up its current location. I'll leave everything here on and go back to the previous screen. Find My also allows you to share your location with friends and family. If you want to enable this feature, you can enable Share My Location. But once you've turned on Find My iPhone, that's pretty much it. You can forget about it until the day you lose or misplace your phone. So if it ever happens that you lose your phone or even simply misplace it somewhere in your home or office, go to icloud.com in your web browser and log in with your Apple ID. Click the Find iPhone icon. You might be prompted to sign in again. And after a moment, a map will appear, giving you the approximate location of all of your devices that are signed into that same account. If you have multiple devices, they'll be listed here under All Devices. And you can select the one you want to locate. And in case you're wondering, this location information is encrypted, so it can't be intercepted or read by anyone else to find your location. Your location can only be revealed on the devices you're logged into with your Apple ID. You can click this refresh button to update your phone's location, which might be useful if someone stole your phone and they're driving around with it. You could potentially let the police know the approximate location of your phone, and there have been many reports of Find My leading the police right to the person who stole the phone. Now, this display over here gives you information, like how long ago your device was located and shows its current battery level. Below this image of the device are three buttons. The first one here is Play Sound. This lets you send a command to your phone that makes it play a loud pinging sound. And the great thing about this is that it works even if you left your phone in Silent mode. This feature comes in handy all the time if you often can't remember where you left your phone sitting around your home. Just click Play Sound to immediately make your phone start pinging. (iPhone ringing) So as long as your phone is still on, it should start emitting a sound within seconds. And in cases where you know the phone is in your house, you can start wandering around looking for it. The next button here is Lost Mode. This is used when you've actually lost your phone and once you protect it from being used by someone who just picks it up. Click Lost Mode. Now, if your device is not already passcode locked, you'll be prompted to enter a passcode. This allows you to immediately lock your phone. If your phone is already protected by a passcode, you'll see this screen. Here, you can enter a phone number where anyone who finds your phone can reach you. Once you do that, you can click Next, and you can even enter a short message that can be read by anyone who finds your phone. In a few seconds, a message will appear on your phone, including a button that lets the person who finds your phone call the number you provided directly. And that's the only thing someone finding the phone will be able to do with it. They can't get into the phone without the passcode. Now, if your phone happens to be turned off at the time you sent the message, the message will still appear the next time the phone is turned on. So if some honest stranger picks it up and turns it on, they'll see your message and hopefully give you a call. Now, you may be thinking that even if you set up your device as lost and remotely added a passcode, whoever found or took your device could connect it to a computer and completely erase the phone, pop a new SIM card into it, and it would be impossible to find using Find My. But built into iOS is a feature called Activation Lock, which makes it so that anyone who takes your phone can't disable Find My, can't erase it, and can't restore it without knowing both your Apple ID and your password. And I think over the years, as more people have become aware of Activation Lock, it's becoming clear that there's very little incentive to steal an iOS device since you can't just wipe it clean without a username and password. All right, so the last option here is a Erase iPhone. This is for when you've pretty much exhausted all of your options and you just want to make sure that anyone who finds or steals your phone can't get to any of the data stored on it. Just click Erase iPhone. This basically tells you that this will erase all of your settings and content on your device. Now, notice it says if you enable Find My Network, you'll still be able to locate this phone even after it's wiped. So if you click Erase, you'll be prompted to enter your Apple ID and password again. And once you do that, it will erase your phone remotely. I'm just going to cancel that since my phone is currently sitting safe and sound next to me. Now, the kind of good news is that even after you've wiped your phone, if you happen to find it or it gets returned to you, you can still restore it from the last backup you saved either to your computer or to iCloud. Now, it's also worth noting that iOS and iPadOS also include an app called Find My. This is an app from Apple that provides the same services that are available through the iCloud website, but is offered in Handy App form. So you get the same functionality in this app as you do on the iCloud website. But this is a nicer interface to use when you're on an iPhone, and it also includes the ability to find friends who have shared their location with you. All right, so that's a rundown of the services available from Find My, which, again, is part of the free iCloud collection of online services from Apple.
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