If for some strange cosmic reason you can’t find your iPhone because you forgot where you put it, or you were simply a victim of theft, this information is for you. We are going to teach you how to find your Apple device quickly and easily wherever you are.
Apple is a company that cares a lot about the security of its users, so it perfectly understands the risk of your mobile being lost. If it falls into the wrong hands, all the information you have stored in it will be 100% compromised.
That is why the firm founded by Steve Jobs devised various tools specially designed to allow you to find your iPhone when it is lost or stolen. In the same way, other people have developed “unofficial” methods that we will also teach you to apply perfectly.
What is Find My iPhone and what is this function for?
It is an iCloud tool that allows you to locate your mobile wherever it is using its GPS. It’s a very simple concept, but Apple developed it so well that it took it to another level by fulfilling much more than the initial premise.
To use this tool, you need to have it configured and activated on your smartphone beforehand, which can be done very easily. In fact, most terminals come with the feature installed from the factory.
Steps to activate and use Find My iPhone to find your mobile if it is lost or stolen
Now that you know well what the tool is and what it works for, we proceed to teach you how to activate it and use it to find your Apple device with it. You simply have to precisely follow the steps that we will explain to you for each of the processes:
Turn on Find My iPhone
Activating this tool is something extremely simple that will not take you more than a minute and with this you will be protecting your mobile and the information inside it since you will be able to find it wherever you are. However, if you do not activate it, you will lose the possibility of finding it when it is lost or stolen..
So the first thing you should do when taking your iPhone out of the box is with these steps:
- go to “Settings” and enter your Apple ID and passcode if you don’t see a prompting screen.
- inside the menu “Settings”click on your username and from there, touch on “iCloud”.
- Then, look for the option “Search my Iphone”. Later on the screen that appears you will only have to activate or deactivate depending on what you want. To do this, press the button on the right.
That’s all you have to do to start enjoying all the benefits that the tool can offer you to find your smartphone wherever it is. But the mission is not over yet, now you must learn to find your mobile when it gets lost.
find mobile
Well, if you have the application active since the day you took the mobile out of the packaging, then you are in a privileged position because not all users always do it. Now that your phone is lost or stolen, it’s time to locate it with Find My iPhone in iCloud..
This is a very simple process that you can carry out from the web and from the official app of the tool. Just follow these steps:
- If you will do the process from the web, what you should do is simply go to icloud.com and log in with your username and password Apple ID.
- Once inside go to the section “Search my Iphone” and in it select “All devices”. Here you will see a list of devices and next to it a circle with a color; if it is green it means that the mobile is connected, and if it is gray it is not.
- Beam click on the lost device. If it’s online, you’ll be able to see its location on a map in real time, and if it’s offline you’ll see the last location it was at before going offline.
That’s it, at this point you should already have precise information on the location of the iPhone or iPad on the map or at least where it was the last time it was lost. With it you will be able to find it wherever it is with astonishing ease.
*Note: if the mobile is connected and located inside your house, you can select the option “make it ring”, so that it emits a sound that allows you to find it inside the property.
What devices can I find besides the iPhone or iPad?
You can use this method that we have just explained to you to find basically all Apple devices, including MacOS. When you click “All Devices” You will see that your Airpods, AppleWhatch and even your laptop can appear.
The only requirement they must meet to appear on this list is have the function perfectly activatedotherwise you will not be able to track it from your iCloud.
What should I do if I don’t see my iPhone in the list of devices? What if it’s offline?
There are scenarios where it will not be so easy to use the tool to find your Apple mobile. In these you will have to go a little further if you really want to find your device. But fortunately here we explain it to you step by step so that you understand everything perfectly.
If it is not in the list of devices
This usually happens a lot. You go to iCloud.com, enter “All devices” and you find yourself with the unpleasant surprise that the one you are looking for is not on the list. In this case there is not much to do because if there is no device to find nothing will be found.
Therefore, you must ensure that:
- The iPhone you’re looking for has Find My iPhone turned on. As we mentioned before, this is an excluding factor since if it is not active, it means that the user does not authorize Apple to track their cell phone.
- That it is connected to the internet or that it has coverage. Being a tool that works with satellites, it is necessary for the mobile to be able to connect to them through a telephone network or WiFi.
- Associated with your Apple ID. If you bought your iPhone secondhand, then it’s very likely that the previous owner has it linked to their Apple ID profile. You must call them and ask them to unlink them so that you can link them to your profile and track them in the future.
Those are the only 3 things you can do in case the device is not listed in iCloud, so if you find yourself in this scenario and your phone was stolen, it is unlikely that you will be able to find it from here.
If it appears offline
Another scenario that causes discomfort is when we see that the tool shows us the message “Without connection” either “No location available.” This can be caused by the following reasons:
- That the device is turned off. If your computer has been stolen, the thieves have most likely turned it off so you can’t locate it.
- Being offline or without coverage. In this case it will be impossible for it to connect with the satellites, so it will not be able to be located exactly.
- That the tool is not available in your country. For bureaucratic reasons, in some countries the Find My iPhone service is not available, so you will not be able to use the tool in these cases.
If the reason is one of the first two that we mentioned in this short list, what you should do is wait for the mobile to turn on or connect to be able to track it. In this point, the only information iCloud shows you is the exact location when it was last on or online.
In case the service is not available in your country you will not be able to do basically anything to find your iPhone with this tool. So you can get the idea of buying another mobile.
I found my iPhone but I can’t get it back. What can I do in this case?
If you have located your mobile but it is in the hands of some insufferable thugs who will not let you recover it, iCloud offers you a series of measures to protect your information within the mobile and basically make it a simple unusable circuitry:
Delete data remotely
The first thing on your mind in such a scenario is your data, so more than likely you want to delete it all from that device. Apple thought of this and lets you do it in the simplest way possible.
You just have to follow these steps:
- Go into iCloud.com and login with your Apple ID.
- Later go to “Search my Iphone” and select “All devices”.
- Once there, select the lost device and in the box corresponding to it, mark the option “Erase iPhone.”
To confirm the action, you must enter your Apple ID access credentials again, and this will make it your mobile deletes information such as:
- All photos, videos and document files will be removed from the device.
- All sessions on social networks and other platforms will be closed that are still open when you erase the iPhone.
- All credit cards and bank accounts associated with Apple Pay will be removedso that no one can pay with them.
If the device is connected at the time of remote wipe, it will start wiping everything immediately. If, on the other hand, you are offline, it will wait for you to reconnect to delete it completely. Also, if you manage to recover your computer after erasing it, you can restore it from a backup in iTunes or iCloud.
Enable Activation Lock
If you have ever had to perform a complete reset of your iPhone, surely you already know what . This is a security tool from Apple that prevents the device from being used for anything other than making an emergency call. To unlock it, you will need authorization from the owner, so they will never be able to access your information..
This is a feature that is automatically turned on when you set up Find My iPhone, so you will not have to do anything but watch the world of those thieves burn down when they realize that they cannot activate the device. Once you delete all the content inside it, the next time the mobile is turned on it will show the Activation Lock screen.
Activate Lost Mode
Finally, another measure that you have if you cannot recover your Apple mobile is to activate what is known as “Lost Mode”. It is a function that constantly monitors your mobile and keeps it blocked. In this way, every time the device connects, you will receive an email notification of your AppleIDso that you can track it down in the future with the help of the authorities.
Steps to search and find a lost or stolen Apple mobile without Find My iPhone
Well, this is a post on how to find your iPhone and we are going to teach you all the methods that you can resort to when Find My iPhone fails you completely. These alternatives are not completely infallible, but they do have an excellent margin of success..
With a tracking app
The first option and the most obvious of all is to use a mobile GPS tracking application. These are nothing more than tools like Find My iPhone, but they are developed by brands other than Apple. In the app store for iOS…
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