How To: Find Your Lost iPhone, iPad, or Mac
Technology can be very expensive, and the worst thing that can happen (other than it jumping out of your hand or letting it go for a swim) is losing or misplacing it. Thus, it is important to make sure to enable Find My iPhone (don’t get caught up with the name, it works on iPods, iPads and Macs) on all of your Apple products.
The Find My iPhone feature allows you to easily track down your lost iPhone, iPod, iPad, or Mac, the feature even offers an option to remotely wipe the devices if you think it fell into the wrong hands.
Please note: iPods, Macs, and non 3G/4G/LTE versions of the iPad, must be connected to WiFi.
Configuring Find My iPhone
On your iDevice, go to Settings and Scroll down to choose iCloud
Make sure that your Account is set.
Scroll further down and turn on Find My iPhone
A screen will appear asking if you want to Allow.
Once it is allowed, test it out.
Testing out Find My iPhone
Go to the App Store, you can even do this on the device that you are trying to locate.
Search for and download Find My iPhone
Open it up and log in with the same account you use for iCloud.
The app will find and show you a map of where your device is. You can send audible tone; send a message and even go as far as wiping the data in case you are worried that it has fallen into the wrong hands. Although, once you wipe the data, the device will be lost and will not be able to be located using Find My iPhone.
Configuring Find My Mac
On the Mac (iMac, MacBook, Air, etc)
Click on the Apple () button on the top left menu.
Choose System Preferences from the drop down
Click on iCloud
Once you are logged in you can scroll down and enable Find My Mac.
In the situation that you lose your device, go on a web browser and navigate to www.icloud.com and log in with the same account you have set for your devices. You will see an icon that looks like a radar screen. Selecting that icon will let you track any devices that are enabled.
With any luck, you will never have to use this, but it is nice to know that there is some way to track your device.
For our Google friends, check out this article on CNET on how to find your lost Android devices.