How do you use find my phone on iphone

Become a friendly neighborhood iPhone tracker for your friends with this simple solution.

By Olena Kagui Updated 10/22/2022

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Become a friendly neighborhood iPhone tracker for your friends with this simple solution.
How to Find Someone’s iPhone: Important Notes
How Do You Find Someone Else's iPhone?
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How do I use Find My iPhone to find another phone?
How exactly does Find My iPhone work?
How do you track a family members iPhone?

The iPhone Find My app is a great tool to find a misplaced, lost, or even stolen iPhone. While it is most commonly used to locate your own devices, you can also find someone else’s iPhone using this feature. The Find My app allows you to help a friend find their iPhone, since it now cleverly combines the Find My iPhone and Find My Friends functions that Apple released previously.

How to Find Someone’s iPhone: Important Notes

Make sure to follow the steps below and use the Help a Friend feature within the Find My app. The Help a Friend feature bypasses the two-factor authentication. If you just sign in to iCloud on the browser of your friend's iPhone, you will be asked to enter a 6-digit passcode (a definite problem if your device is lost).
Once you have logged into iCloud from the Help a Friend feature, do NOT sign out until you find the device. Multiple login attempts trigger extra iCloud security, so if you sign out and try to log back in, you might be asked to enter an authentication code from your lost device.
If your lost iPhone is dead or offline, you can see the last known location but not the current location. As long as you have Send Last Location enabled (this feature is enabled by default, so you would have had to manually switch it off), you can still see the last known location.

Related: How to Find Your iPhone Even If It’s Dead or Offline

How Do You Find Someone Else's iPhone?

Whether you have the latest iOS 16 or an older software version, you can find a friend's iPhone (or find your own iPhone from someone else's iPhone) by following these simple steps. Once you master this move, sign up for our free Tip of the Day newsletter to find more ways to be your friends' iPhone savior. Let's cover how to use Find My iPhone for a friend:

Open the Find My app.
Select Me from the options on the bottom of the screen.
Tap Help a Friend at the very bottom. This will open iCloud.com. From the menu that appears, tap Use a different Apple ID in the smaller letters below the word "Continue".
Have your friend sign in to iCloud using their Apple ID to see their devices. If they are offered the chance to stay logged in to this ID and save the password, your friend should decline.
Select the device they are looking for.
If the lost device appears to be nearby, you can tap Play Sound to help you locate it.
If the lost iPhone is far away, you can tap Lost Mode to help protect the data on the phone and automatically turn on Low Power Mode to give you more time to search.
Once your friend has located the lost device, tap their name in the top-right corner and select Sign Out to log out of iCloud.

While searching for your lost device, I don't recommend using the third option in that bottom menu—deleting everything from the iPhone with the Erase iPhone button—unless you're sure the phone is in danger and the private data is at risk of being stolen. To help make this decision, you can read up on what Lost Mode does, and see if it will do an adequate job of protecting the compromised iPhone.

Now that you know how to find someone else's lost iPhone, you'll be very popular with your more forgetful friends! Read about how accurate Find My iPhone really is next.

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Olena Kagui's picture

Olena Kagui is a Feature Writer at iPhone Life who lives in Hawaii. With a BA in International Relations from Anglo American University, Olena traveled the world. She has lived in Ukraine, the Czech Republic, China, and the USA. Olena won an excellence award for a controversial article, got a grant to blog from a war-zone, and published a short fictional story. She hopes to publish a full-length novel and continue writing up a storm on her blog The Travel Bug Bite! When she’s not typing or flying, she is loving on animals, crafting bizarre creations, and devouring all-you-can-eat sushi.

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How do I use Find My iPhone to find another phone?

Locate a device in Find My iPhone on iCloud.com.

In Find My iPhone on iCloud.com, click All Devices. Select the device you want to locate. ... .

To locate another device, click the name of the current device in the center of the toolbar to access the Devices list, then select a new device..

How exactly does Find My iPhone work?

You can use Find My on your iPhone to see the location of your device on a map and play a sound on it to help you find it. If the device is online, you see the location of the device. If the device is offline, you see the location of the device the last time it went online or connected to the Find My network.

How do you track a family members iPhone?

Share locations with family members and locate their lost devices on iPhone.

Go to Settings > [your name] > Family Sharing, then scroll down and tap Location..

Tap the name of a family member you want to share your location with. You can repeat this step for each family member you want to share your location with..