How to Turn Off Find My iPhone? [a Beginner-Friendly Guide]

Our phones have become an inseparable part of our daily lives.

Losing yours can cause a great deal of frustration and possibly lead to a serious invasion of privacy. Fortunately, as long as you keep Apple’s Find My iPhone feature on, you can track it.

But. 

You need to know how to turn off Find My iPhone if:

• You need to factory reset the device
• Plan on selling it
• If you are taking your phone to be repaired or serviced.

It’s super easy to do it:

How To Turn Off Find My iPhone?

There are two main ways of turning Find My iPhone off:

• directly within the settings 
• remotely erasing the data on your device 

Note: If you completely sign out of iCloud on your device, this will also turn Find My iPhone off. But you should do this only if you are ditching that phone for good. Without your Apple ID anyone can just log in with their own details and there would be no way of proving it’s actually yours.   

Within The Phone’s Settings

Let’s start with the easier option:

• Navigate to the Settings app and go to your iCloud page. That’s the large tab on top with your name on it.

• Tap Find My.

• Press Find My iPhone and then simply flick the first switch to turn it off.

• As a security measure you must enter your Apple ID password in order for the change to take effect.л

How to Turn off Find My iPhone Remotely?

Let’s say you shipped that old device you sold online and realize you completely forgot about turning Find My iPhone off. 

Well, don’t you worry.

You can simply log on to the iCloud website and do it by remotely erasing your data.

How to turn off Find My iPhone with iCloud:

• Go to iCloud.com and click Find My. You will need to login with your Apple ID.

 

• Press All Devices, above the map and select your phone from the dropdown menu.

• Once you have selected it press Erase iPhone.

• Click Erase in the pop-up window again to confirm you want to do it. You will be prompted to enter your Apple ID.
• Tap on Remove Account.

Note: Apple is a bit inconsistent with the actual naming of the app on iCloud, it may be just Find My or Find My iPhone/iPad etc. Either way, the app is the same. 

Now your iPhone is free to be set up by its new owner. 

How to delete iPhone from Find My mobile app:

The process is similar to the one above. However, you will need another device that has the Find My app.

• Go to the Find My app. It will either be in your Utilities or Other folder, or you can just pull down the search bar and type it in.

• Select your iPhone from the list.

• At the bottom of the menu press Erase This Device.

• Make sure to read the warning message. When you press Continue you’ll be asked to enter your Apple ID.

You should also be aware that those two methods will erase all of your iPhone’s data. So use them wisely.

Wrap Up 

As you have learned, disabling Find My iPhone is super easy. 

You also have a number of options to do so, both on the phone itself and remotely.  

But.

The hardships this tool will save you if you have your phone stolen or misplaced, are way too many to ignore.

It’s definitely better to keep it on.