How to Find a Lost iPhone and Erase Data Remotely

Have you ever forgotten your iPhone on your bed, on a street, in a coffee shop, or at your office, and then it became a headache to find it by giving calls on your phone number and blindly following your way back? Well, this could happen to any person who is too busy or you can say too lazy to take care of gadgets. This is a normal thing and we shouldn't have to worry about such hurdles.

To help you don't feel down when you lost your iPhone, Apple did the best by introducing Find My iPhone feature in all the iPhone models. Yes, no matter if you own an old or the latest iPhone model, you can enable Find My iPhone security feature and find your iPhone whenever you get it lost or even to find a stolen iPhone. Besides all of this, you can ring your iPhone for free and even wipe out all of your personal data remotely just to be safe when you think that your iPhone has been stolen and you will never find it easily.

Here we are helping you to understand how you can do all this step-by-step and first, you have to enable this feature in your iPhone.

This is How to Enable Find My iPhone

Here's how you can enable Find My iPhone feature to easily trace or track your iPhone:

1. Go to your iPhone Settings.
2. Tap on the Apple ID menu (available right below the search bar).
3. Tap on the Find My option (available after iCloud and Media & Purchases).
4. Tap on the Find My iPhone option and toggle it on

You should toggle on the Find My Network and Send Last Location options too to find your iPhone even if it's offline and automatically send your iPhone's last location to Apple when the battery is critically low (it will help you a lot to find a lost or stolen iPhone for free without using any third-party software).

How to View Lost iPhone Location on a Map?

After enabling Find My iPhone feature, here's how you can find a lost iPhone location remotely on a map:

1. Go to icloud.com/find on your computer or another smartphone.
2. Sign in using your Apple ID and password (that you used in your iPhone) and it will automatically start locating your iPhone.
3. After a few seconds, your iPhone's live location should appear on a map (last or live location depends on the device's on/off status).
4. If the location is familiar and you feel safe, you should trace your iPhone using that map, or else, you can contact a law enforcement agency

Your local police or another law enforcement you will contact may ask you about the serial number, MEID, IMEI code of your iPhone. You can give these details to them and let them find your lost iPhone legally. You can find the serial number or IMEI codes from your Apple ID and the device's original package/box too.

How to Play a Sound on Your Lost iPhone

If you are just testing, or you think you lost your iPhone in your own house or office and a sound could help you out, you can do it easily by following the steps written below:

1. When you are done with locating your iPhone on icloud.com/find click on the All Devices option.
2. From the drop-down menu, select your lost iPhone model.
3. A floating box will appear (at the top right corner) and it will show a photo of your iPhone, its name, remaining battery, network, etc.
4. There you will see a Play Sound button too, click on it and it will make your iPhone sound a beeping ring and vibrate.

It will make a lost iPhone sound louder even if it is on silent mode.

How to Erase Data on Your Lost iPhone

If you think that your iPhone couldn't be tracked and you wanna give up on it. You can safely delete all your personal and professional data from your lost iPhone. Follow the simple steps below:

1. After going to icloud.com/find and logging in
2. Select your iPhone model, a floating box will appear
3. It will show you a button saying Erase iPhone click on it
4. A pop-up message will ask for your confirmation.
5. Confirm and click on Erase.

Just think for a while before performing this data erasing that will remotely wipe all of your iPhone data because, after this, you will never be able to locate your iPhone.

If you don't have any really-personal data in your iPhone storage, you can do another better thing by marking your iPhone as lost.

How to Mark Your iPhone as Lost

If you don't want anyone to use your iPhone and do it without deleting your data. You can do it by following the simple steps below:

1. Go to icloud.com/find and log in, select an iPhone model.
2. You will see a floating box with the Lost Mode button.
3. Click on the Lost Mode button and it will ask you to put a phone number.
4. You can also add a note to appeal to the other person to call you (in case someone else finds your lost iPhone).
5. Click on Done and this will lock your iPhone with a secure passcode.

This is by far the best option to lock your lost or stolen iPhone and still have the data in it without giving access to anyone else.

So, this was all about how to find a lost iPhone and erase data remotely or simply mark it as lost to find it again.

What do you think about this tech-guide and do you know you can do the same on android too?