Using the Find My iPhone app

Find My iPhone is a useful app made by Apple that allows you to see where your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook is located on a map in case you lose it or it’s stolen. You can even erase all the data remotely, send an alert to it (for instance, a message about a reward for returning it), play a loud sound on it to help you locate it, among other features. It’s a free, must-have app. All you have to do to set it up is log in the first time with your iCloud account. Before iOS 7, Apple allowed you to set up Find My iPhone with your non-primary iCloud account. Let me explain: In a previous post, I explained how each person should have their own iCloud account. This is necessary to allow each family member to have their own iMessage, FaceTime, and device backup. It’s also a good idea to have a main family iCloud account if you want to share Contacts and Calendars. (In my household, it’s my iCloud account that’s the main family one.) Before iOS 7, you could use the main family iCloud account to track all devices in Find My iPhone. After iOS 7, they force you to use your individual (aka primary) iCloud account for Find My iPhone. It’s not a deal-breaker by any stretch of the imagination. It simply means that if you want to find the location of more than one iDevice, you’ll need to log out of Find My iPhone and then log into the next user’s iCloud Account to find the next device.

To set up Find My iPhone:

1. Go to Settings > iCloud
2. Flip ‘Find My iPhone’ to ON. Yep, that’s it.