Find My iPhone App for a Lost, Stolen or Switched-Off Phone
Apple's Find My is free and built in. It maps, rings, locks and erases a lost iPhone, and can still find one for up to 24 hours after it is switched off.
Find My only helps if it was switched on before the phone went missing, so check yours now: open Settings, tap your name, then Find My. If the iPhone is already lost, go to icloud.com/find on any phone or computer and sign in with your Apple Account. Apple says you do not need a verification code to sign in there.
No other app replaces it for a lost or stolen iPhone. The ones from other makers do different jobs: some share your location with family or friends, and some ring a phone that is somewhere in the house. Nothing here is sold for tracking a person without their knowledge. Every app below is for your own phone, or for people who have agreed to share where they are.
What Find My can do with a missing iPhone
Apple’s Find My iPhone became Find My, Apple’s own app and part of iOS. The App Store lists it as free, with nothing to buy.
To see the phone on a map, open Find My on another Apple device, tap Devices and choose the iPhone. Directions opens the route in Maps. Play a sound and it starts after a short delay, grows louder and lasts about two minutes.
Lost Mode locks the phone with its passcode and suspends the cards you use with Apple Pay. You can put a phone number and a message on the Lock Screen, and the phone still takes calls.
Erasing cannot be undone, and Apple tells you to try everything else first. Activation Lock stays on afterwards, so nobody can set the phone up again without your Apple Account password. Apple repeats one warning: do not remove the phone from Find My, even after erasing it. Removing it turns off Activation Lock and makes the phone easier to resell.
If the phone was stolen
Mark it as lost quickly and leave your contact details off the Lock Screen message. Do not go to the place on the map yourself. Report it to the police, who may ask for the serial number. Apple also says it will never contact you to say your iPhone has been found, so treat any message that says so as a scam. The full steps are on Apple’s lost iPhone page.
The IMEI number does not help you here. Find My works by signing in with your Apple Account, and Apple’s pages offer no search by IMEI. Keep the serial number for the police report.
Find My iPhone from another phone or a computer
Anything with a browser will do. Go to icloud.com/find and sign in with your Apple Account. Apple points you here when you have no other Apple device to hand, which covers an Android phone or a Windows PC. If the page asks for a verification code, choose the Find Devices button. Select the phone under All Devices, then play a sound, mark it as lost or erase it.
Apple does not let you add a friend’s device to Find My, so on a friend’s iPhone use the browser and the same address, and sign out when you finish. In a Family Sharing group with location sharing set up, your devices appear in the Find My app on your family’s phones, below their own. On your own iPad or Mac, open Find My and choose Devices.
On an Apple Watch, press the side button to open Control Center and tap the ping iPhone button. The iPhone plays a sound, and if you touch and hold the button it flashes too.
Finding an iPhone that is off or offline
The Find My network is how an iPhone can be found with no Wi-Fi or mobile data. Apple describes it as a crowdsourced network of over a billion Apple devices. They detect a nearby device over Bluetooth and report its approximate location to the owner, anonymously and encrypted.
With Find My network switched on, Apple says a supported iPhone can be located for up to 24 hours after it is turned off, or up to 5 hours in power reserve mode. After that you are looking at the last known location. The Find My app keeps it for up to seven days and then shows “No location found”. iCloud.com shows a location for up to 24 hours.
You can still act on a phone that is offline. Play a sound, turn on Lost Mode or start an erase, and Find My marks the request as pending and carries it out when the phone next connects. Turn on Notify When Found too.
Apple adds that Find My features vary by country or region, so offline finding is not promised everywhere.
How to turn on Find My iPhone
- Open Settings and tap your name, then Find My.
- Tap Find My iPhone and switch it on.
- Switch on Find My network. This is what lets the phone be found when it is offline.
- Switch on Send Last Location. The phone then sends its position to Apple when the battery is critically low.
Location Services has to be on for Find My as well, or the phone cannot show on a map.
If Find My was off when the phone went missing, Apple is blunt about it. The phone will not appear in the app or at icloud.com/find, and you cannot mark it as lost or erase it. Change your Apple Account password and report the loss.
Apps for sharing your location
Find My already does this between Apple users. In the People tab you choose a friend and how long to share for, and a family that is all on iPhones can use Family Sharing with nothing to install. The reason to look further is a group that is not all on iPhones.
Life360 puts the whole family on one map, and it is on Google Play as well, so it fits a family split between iPhone and Android. Begin on the free version. Its listing says that includes location sharing, location history, crash detection and place alerts. Paid memberships add longer history and roadside assistance, and the App Store lists in-app purchases from $7.99 to $24.99.
Glympse, from Glympse Inc., is for one journey at a time. You send a link, the other person watches you move on a map in their browser with no app and no account, and the sharing ends by itself. It is free, and the listing says the paid features are aimed at businesses and events.
Google Maps, free with in-app purchases, has location sharing under your profile picture. Google’s help page says you choose who sees you and for how long, and that they also see your battery level. The other person needs a Google Account. If they have none, Maps makes a link that shows your location for up to 24 hours. Like Glympse, that suits showing someone where you are for an hour.
WhatsApp can do the same inside a chat. Its help centre describes live location as something you share for a length of time you pick and can stop whenever you like.
iSharing, from iSharingSoft, is a free family locator in the Life360 mould, with place alerts, a panic alert and a phone’s last known location. Its listing states that sharing needs the consent of everyone involved. Driving reports and unlimited place alerts are behind a premium subscription, which the App Store lists at $7.99 for a month and $69.99 for a year.
Findmykids, from LETEM LTD and once spelled Find My Kids, is written for parents. It shows a child’s phone on a map, with an SOS button and a loud signal that overrides silent mode. The same app goes on the child’s phone and joins with an invitation code, and the listing says it cannot be installed secretly and should only be used with the child’s consent. Everything is free for 7 days. After that only the live location stays free. If the child’s phone is an Android, start with our guide to child safety apps for Android.
Apps that ring a phone lost in the house
Find My can ring your iPhone from icloud.com/find on a laptop, and an Apple Watch can ping it. If you have neither nearby, a Bluetooth tracker on your keys does the job in reverse. Tile, from Tile, Inc., and Chipolo, from Chipolo d.o.o., both say a double press on the tracker makes the phone ring, and Tile says even on silent. Both apps are free to download and do nothing without the tracker, and Tile has in-app purchases.
Names to be careful with
The App Store has many apps that ring the phone when you clap or whistle, and we would skip them. Find my phone – Device Finder states $5.99 a month in its listing, and ClapFind lists a weekly plan at up to $6.99. That is a lot for a sound.
Be as careful with family locators that have “Find My Phone” in the name. Find my Phone – Family Locator and Find My Phone, Friends&Family both list weekly subscriptions, at $5.99 to $9.99 a week. Try Find My or the free version of Life360 first.
Google’s finder is for Android phones, and a search of the App Store turns up no such app from Google. FamiSafe is a parental-control app and not a phone finder. Prey is on the App Store as Prey: Tracking & Security, but the listing now describes a tool for organisations managing a fleet of devices.
