“Can I turn off Find My iPhone from my computer? I don’t want others to know my whereabouts, but can’t find any feasible solution to turn this feature off!”
If you are a regular iPhone user, then you might already be familiar with the Find My iPhone service. It is a native feature, developed by Apple to make it easier for us to locate our linked iOS device. While the feature is certainly useful, it can tamper with your privacy at times or would not allow you to troubleshoot your device. To resolve these cases, a lot of users ask us how to turn off Find My iPhone from computer or the device itself. Head on as I’m going to provide a seamless solution to turn off Find My iPhone from Computer and iDevice in this post.
Part 1: Why People Wish to Turn off Find My iPhone?
Before we learn how to turn off Find My iPhone from a computer or a device, it is important to know the reason for taking this drastic action. Ideally, you could be undergoing either of the following situations.
- Privacy is one of the major concerns for every smart user these days and Find My iPhone directly tampers with that. Since it keeps a track of our whereabouts on a real-time basis, you might wish to turn it off. Otherwise, anyone with your iCloud account details can access your present or past locations.
- Chances are that you might be reselling your phone to someone else. In this case, it is highly recommended to disable the Find My iPhone feature and further resetting the phone.
- If your iOS device is malfunctioning and you wish to fix its firmware, then the Find My iPhone feature can act as a barrier. That is why it is always recommended to disable this option before fixing your iOS device’s firmware using any third-party tool.
Part 2: How to Turn off Find My iPhone from iDevice
Ideally, Find My Device is a location-based service that you can use on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. Once the service is linked to your device, you can go to your iCloud account and remotely view your device’s location. Needless to say, it is majorly used to locate a lost or stolen device and even ring it if you can’t find it. The good thing is that you can disable it whenever you want by visiting your device’s settings. All you got to do is follow these easy steps to turn off the Find My iPhone service from your device.
Step 1. To start with, just unlock your iOS device and go to its Settings (by tapping on the gear icon). From here, just tap on your name to visit the Apple ID and iCloud settings.
Step 2. Now, browse to its iCloud Settings and scroll a little to see the “Find My iPhone” feature.
Step 3. Simply tap on the Find My iPhone feature here to get more options. As you would open its screen, you can toggle off the Find My iPhone option from here.
Step 4. Your device will display a pop-up, asking you to log-in to the linked iCloud account for authentication. Simply enter the correct iCloud account credentials and tap on the “Turn Off” button to disable Find My iPhone.
Step 5. Besides that, if you want to turn the feature off from your connected Apple Watch, then go to Apple Watch settings on your iPhone. From here, you can tap on the Unpair option and again log-in to the linked iCloud account to confirm your choice.
Part 3: How to Turn off Find My iPhone from Computer
Apart from directly switching off the feature from your device, you can also learn how to turn off Find My iPhone from a computer as well. This is because the feature is linked to your iCloud account that you can access from any computer. Therefore, if you know the credentials for the linked iCloud account, then you can just disable Find My iPhone from any system. To learn how to turn off Find My iPhone with a computer (that can be running on any OS), the following steps can be taken.
Step 1. Firstly, launch any reliable web browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox on your computer and go to the official website of iCloud. Now, log-in to the same iCloud account that is already linked to your iDevice.
Step 2. After successfully logging-in to your account, you can view various features of iCloud like Photos, Calendar, and more. From here, just click on the “Find My iPhone” option.
Step 3. This will open a map-like interface on the screen. Just click on the “All Devices” dropdown menu from the top to get a list of all the connected iDevices.
Step 4. Now, just select the iDevice that you wish to delete from your account here. It will automatically load the present location of the device with its snapshot on the right.
Step 5. From all the provided options at the bottom of the device, click on the “Erase iPhone” button and confirm your choice.
Step 6. Furthermore, you can also select the “Remove from Account” option from here to make sure the device will no longer be linked to your Find My iPhone feature.
Bonus: Things to Remember + An Alternative
Now when you know how to turn off Find My iPhone from a computer, you can easily meet your requirements. Though, you should know in advance that it can have its own risk. For instance, if your device gets lost or stolen, then you won’t be able to find it remotely. Also, it gives us an option to ring the device remotely (even if the phone is in the silent mode) that would no longer be accessible.
Ideally, if you are concerned about your privacy, then you can temporarily disable the location services on your phone instead. For this, just go to your iPhone’s Settings > Privacy and turn off the Location Services. In this way, various apps can’t follow your location in the background and you can protect your privacy.
That’s a wrap, everyone! I’m sure that after following this step by step guide, you would be able to turn off Find My iPhone from computer. Besides that, I have also listed a clear tutorial on turning off the feature directly from your device as well. Needless to say, to turn off Find My iPhone, you need to know the credentials of the iCloud account beforehand. Go ahead and try these solutions and share this guide with others to teach them how to turn off Find My iPhone from computer or iDevice.
