With respect to the burglary incident worth of up to 100 smartphones that was witnessed at Coachella weeks back, we hereby release this iPhone security tip. How to set up and use the “Find My iPhone” application. The crazy thieves could not go so far when a hand full of individuals had used this application. The iPhone search operation was done in iOS devices and computers. The individuals used the “Find My iPhone” only to make a discovery that a man nearby had one of the devices before he could clear the scene. “Find My iPhone” is very simple to use and furthermore a great tool which may help you when looking for a lost idevice or interestingly bringing the stolen one back home.
First things first. When setting up your application “Find My iPhone”, the device will first prompt you to activate iCloud and then “Find My iPhone”. A bigger population of iOS device owners have already enabled this feature in their devices. Some have even enabled the feature without knowing its benefits. Nevertheless, this approach is for you, that has not yet enabled the feature or may have enabled and have no idea of how things work. We have made a detailed coverage of how the “Find My iPhone” feature works and how helpful it can be to you.
The Location
This is one of the preliminaries that you must engage for the feature to work. The Location services have to be enabled. This would enable the iOS device to send the GPS location or the last location that the iPhone was detected through either Wi Fi or cell signal. Lest you enable the location services, the “Find My iPhone” app will be unable to send the predetermined location of the device. For you to turn the location services on you can find the setting under privacy in settings. When at the Location services, tap the switch, which would turn green to show it is on.
That would not be enough. Filtering which applications would be using the location service would be an essence on its own. You will have three options, that is a particular application would track your iPhone or iPad always, while using the application or never. It would not be an obligation that you should always have your iPad or iPhone location always tracked. It is absolutely your own choice to determine which applications would get to track your location. It is our high recommendation that “Find My iPhone” should be in the top list of the applications that would always track the iPhone or iPad when lost.
A Link in The Cloud
ICloud is one of the most secure platforms in the tech sector. It would be a necessity for you to get to iCloud and set up “Find My iPhone”. Here you would be required to enable “Find My iPhone”. Older iOS devices on iOS 10.3 have a menu for the iCloud settings but beginning in 10.3, all your personal details such as payments, accounts and passwords have been confined in a single menu in a banner at the settings bar.
The setting banner would have a picture of you or any preferred picture that you placed as your identification picture on your apple account profile. On tapping the account settings option, the settings banner would appear with all your personal details shown. You would find the iCloud menu here. Besides the iTunes, family sharing and app store would be in the same place.
Apparently in the recent iOS versions, the iCloud menu has remained intact. The “Find My iPhone” is found as the last item on the list. You will enable the “Find My iPhone” feature by toggling the switch to show a green color. The toggle at the bottom is a usable feature that would let your device transmit and even store the last determined location when the battery was running low. Well this is a very much recommended method of locating a lost device before rushing to a nearby police station.
Make Sure Things Are Working
With very high simplicity, there is no need for struggle in using this feature. All your configured devices would appear once you log in to look for a lost device. The devices only show how many and which devices are linked to your account. That would include both the devices linked by family sharing and iCloud account. In order to focus on a particular device, simply tap on it and it would be showcased on the map.
When you can already see the selected device on the map, tracking options would be displayed on tapping the device on the map. The tracking options include: play a sound, erase device and lost mode.
First, playing a sound would be helpful in finding a device that has be loosed in a few minutes or nearby. Sometimes you may have an idea of where you might have lost it but do not have the exact location. It would be helpful to locate a device lost in an anonymous room, maybe on your way to a grocery store, in a face down while on your bike etc. As a matter of fact, this was a practical incident, when I found my daughter’s iPhone while walking along the road when it was already dusk. I used “Find My iPhone” and played a sound which I heard and located the iPhone.
Parental tip: This sound could be very helpful for that child who find it hard to budge early in the morning may be for studies.
Lost mode, another tracking option, is very handy in helping the custodian of the iPhone or iPad. Lost mode will enable the person with the device to get in touch with the owner of the iPhone easily. For this feature to be helpful, you ought to include a message and a phone number which would be displayed when you turn on lost mode. Your number would be displayed on the other end and a Good Samaritan would make a call and link to give back the device.
To add on top, lost mode sends you an email of the link to the location of the device. This happens once the device is turned on, and has a Wi-Fi or cell signal. Therefore, when you iPhone is lost and has a battery life, possibilities are high that you may find it even without the knowledge of the thief.
Simply input the correct passcode or touch ID to unlock the device and turn off lost mode.
Lastly, erasing the iPhone is another option that would be at your disposal when it is lost. You have the ability to erase the iPhone remotely. This should be the last resort that you may go for. That is when you cannot get the device back. This protects your data from unauthorized people. Erase my iPhone is a daring step which insinuates that you may never access the device again by the use of “Find My iPhone” app. You may be unable to either track or locate the device.
An Added Package
“Find My iPhone” has a couple of features that would be very helpful in locating a lost device. Once you have deduced the location of the device, it may be near or far from where you are. Optionally you may tap either the car icon, which would provide a navigation to the exact destination. If you are in a peculiar location, this might be of great help to you. Other options include getting a ride, walking or transit. The best thing that I appreciate about the navigation feature, is you can know the fastest route to the suggested location.
The battery life feature is vital in determining the amount of time that you may have to get the device before it goes off. This is very helpful when using the play sound feature so you would play the sound strategically.
Access It Conveniently in Any Desktop
Losing an apple device in a place where you cannot access another apple device may be a worry to you. This would not worry that person with this knowledge in mind. “Find My iPhone” can be used even in a Mac and Windows desktop. All you may need is a good internet connection and your valid passwords, not leaving out your apple ID.
Sign in to iCloud.com. You will be required to feed a verification code that would have been sent to your devices. Access code and enter to locate the device. If you have no other device, click the first option that is “Find My iPhone” which would be just below the code boxes.
You will be able to locate a device only when online and connected to the internet. Hope not lost, you have an option of being notified when the device is online if offline.
Yet A Better Package
“Find My iPhone” tightly secures you devices by the help of iOS activation lock. This feature enables one to clear the device off his iCloud credentials in order to deactivate “Find My iPhone”. Thus, the culprit cannot simply erase the device. This is because your credentials will have to be used to unlock the device. Commonly referred to as iCloud locked device, it is very hard to unlock such a device.
It is highly recommended that you take your time to set up “Find My iPhone” in order to locate and most likely find your device when lost. This would save you lots of bucks when trying to find it using other means.
The sad part about about find my iPhone is that you cannot use an Android device to find it. My significant other lost her phone at a bar and I use Android. We had to run around the city asking random people if they had an iPhone we could use so we could find it’s current location (someone was walking around with it). I understand they don’t like the competition, but making it so find my iPhone is impossible to do from and Android really made our lives miserable that day. I mean hell, Google hosts Apples iCloud storage, they won’t let you search for their phones on a Google device?! Disappointing…..