Should find my iphone be on or off

The Find My iPhone feature is a great way to prevent your iPhone from getting lost or being stolen as it allows you to locate and lock your iPhone, even if you don’t have it with you. For example, when Find My iPhone is activated, you can see the location of your device on a map. You can even use it to share your location with others or play a sound on your lost iPhone, making it easier to locate.

To use Find My iPhone, all you need to do is to activate the service and use a computer or some other device to find, reset or lock your lost iPhone. If you’re selling your iPhone or giving it away, you should turn off Find My iPhone first. It can be very inconvenient for the next user if the previous owner’s Find My iPhone feature is still activated when they receive their second-hand iPhone. 

Next, we’ll go through a couple of methods for turning off the Find My iPhone feature. Just keep in mind that you can no longer use the feature to trace and lock your stolen or lost device.

How to turn off Find My iPhone in the phone’s settings

The first method for turning off Find my iPhone is quite simple and straightforward. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the Settings of your iPhone and tap your name or user profile.
2. Navigate to “Find My” and select “Find My iPhone”.
3. If Find My iPhone has been activated, the green tap on top of the page should be green. Switch the “Find My iPhone” tap off.
4. Enter your Apple ID and password. 
5. Confirm that you want to turn off the Find My iPhone feature.
6. Done!

How to turn off Find My iPhone with iCloud

You can deactivate the Find My iPhone feature even if you don’t have access to your device, for example if you have sold your phone and need to turn off the feature afterward. We’ll tell you how to use your web browser to turn off Find My iPhone, but you can do this with the Find My app on an Apple device as well. 

Follow these steps to turn off the feature using iCloud.

1. First, go to icloud.com with your web browser and log in.
2. Navigate to Find My iPhone and select “All Devices” to see a list with all of your Apple devices, including your iPhone.
3. If your iPhone is turned on:
   • Select the iPhone you want to remove and press “Erase iPhone”.
   • Remember that this erases everything on your iPhone, so be sure that you want to confirm. We recommend making sure that you have a backup of your iPhone whenever resetting your phone.
   • Confirm that you want to erase the selected device. You may need to enter your Apple ID and password.
   • Once your iPhone has been erased, press “Remove from Account”.
4. If your iPhone is turned off:
   • Select the iPhone you want to remove and press “Remove from Account”.
5. Done!

Summary: How to turn off Find My iPhone

We recommend using the Find My feature in case your iPhone or some other Apple device gets lost. However, in case you need to deactivate the feature, you can use one of these two methods to do so.

When buying refurbished iPhones from Swappie, you can be sure that the previous owner’s Find My iPhone feature has been turned off. Remember to make sure that you have turned off Find My iPhone when selling your old iPhone to Swappie.

📍 The “Find My” is a very useful feature designed to help you locate your Apple devices. Previously known as “Find my iPhone”, it was renamed with the release of iOS 13, since it now works with your iPad, AirPod, Apple Watch, and MacBook.

You can use “Find My iPhone” from computer or any other Apple device, simply log in with your Apple ID to iCloud and you will be able to find all of your Apple products on a map. Devices that have their “Find My iPhone” turned ON and are linked to your Apple ID will show up as a green dot, devices that are currently offline will show a grey dot for the last known location. Tap on the name of each device to play a sound, put your device into lost mode, or erase your device.
Pretty neat, isn’t it? So how does this work?

If your device got misplaced, forgotten, or, god forbid, stolen, log in to your iCloud account and click “Find My” tab. You will see a screen that looks like this:

To see your device on the map, click “Lost mode”. If you do not have a passcode set up, you will be asked to come up with one.
⚠ DO NOT LOSE this passcode, you will need it to turn off the “Lost mode” on the device. You will also be prompted to include your contact phone number and a message that would appear on the lost phone:

This is how your device will look like on the map:

Here is a very useful User guide by Apple that would guide you through the whole process.

As useful as it sounds, there are times when you need to have “Find My iPhone” disabled:

🔹 To reset or restore your device, to bring it to out-of-the-box condition.

🔹 When bringing it for service to Apple store technicians.

🔹 Before you sell it ot give it away.

The reason behind turning off “Find My iPhone” tool is a feature called Activation Lock. Its purpose is to prevent a potential thief from reseting the stolen device to factory settings and being able to use it. The phone will not accept another Apple ID, except for the old one. Activation Lock is enabled automatically when you turn on “Find My iPhone”.

Before restoring a backup or selling your device to someone, you’ll need to disable Activation Lock by turning off Find My iPhone.

There are two ways to turn off Find My iPhone:

📱 From your device:

• How to turn off Find my iPhone on iOS 13 and 14
• How to turn off Find my iPhone on iOS 12 and below

💻 From your computer

• Disable Find my iPhone from computer

📎 iOS 13, 14 and 15

1. On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, go to Settings > tap on Your Name.



2. Click on “Find My”, then click on “Find my iPhone”.



3. Disable “Find My” by sliding the switch to the left.



4. Once prompted, enter your iCloud password and tap “Turn Off”.

Disable Find My iPhone

📎 iOS 12 and earlier versions

1. On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, navigate to Settings > tap on Your Name > iCloud and look for “Find My iPhone” at the bottom.



2. Disable “Find My iPhone” by sliding the switch to the left.



3. Once prompted, enter your iCloud password and tap “Turn Off”.

Disable Find my iPhone from computer

1. Log-in to your iCloud account.
2. Go to Account Settings.
3. Go to My Devices and remove the device from the list by clicking a blue cross icon, like so:

Now this device is no longer associated with your Apple ID and can be used by someone else. It is also ready to be restored. Check out the best Backup and Restore options below. 👇

Best Backup and Restore Options

💾 CopyTrans Shelbee

To restore your device from a backup disabling “Find My” is also required.

Here at CopyTrans we have designed our own Backup and Restore app, we called it CopyTrans Shelbee. It is a versatile multi-tool, capable of:

🔹 Full Backup or only Latest Changes backup.
🔹 Restoring only selected data, including Apps, Contacts, SMS Messages, Calendars, Settings, Passwords and much more.
🔹 Choosing any folder to store your backup.
🔹 Validating integrity of the backup file after each backup.
🔹 Restoring data from a corrupted iTunes backup.

Here is a taster screenshot for you:

💡 Check us out here:

⚡ User guides for CopyTrans Shelbee
⚡ How to restore iPhone without iTunes?
⚡ What’s happening during Custom restore in CopyTrans Shelbee?
⚡ What does CopyTrans Shelbee backup include?

Download CopyTrans Shelbee

💾 CopyTrans Backup Extractor

Backups are always saved as a bunch of code, they only start making sense when restored back to the device. Ever wondered if it is possible to export your selected data from an old backup directly to your PC? Let’s say you needed your old WhatsApp conversation for some reason, and it is stored in an old backup.

With CopyTrans Backup Extractor you can get it in .PDF format in a couple of clicks without restoring to the device. We can also extract Photos, Messages, Contacts, Calendars, and Notes.

Download CopyTrans Backup Extractor

💡 Check us out here:

⚡ User guides for CopyTrans Backup Extractor
⚡ How to restore WhatsApp messages from iPhone
⚡ How to recover permanently deleted photos from iCloud
⚡ How to recover photos from a broken iPhone?

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