Setting Up and Using iPhone Lost Mode

As long as you have Find My iPhone activated on your iPhone, you can then use a computer and log on to the iCloud web site to trigger Lost Mode. This will lock your phone, and enable you to display a message and phone number on the screen. You'll also get location updates sent to you via email. You can turn off Lost Mode if you find your iPhone.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: So let's say you lose your iPhone. You can use something called Lost Mode to help you get your iPhone back. But first you have to set things up correctly. You should already have this setup but you should check right now to make sure this is always on. 
On your iPhone go into Settings, then go into your Apple ID setting which is your ID there at the top, then into iCloud. Then look for Find My iPhone. Make sure that's on. That's all you need to do in advance. Once that's set then you're ready to use this should you lose your iPhone. 
Now let's say your iPhone is lost. You're going to go, on your Mac, to iCloud.com in the browser. So you can do this on any computer. You don't have to have your computer with you as long as you can get access to one. So go to iCloud.com. Login. Then go to Find iPhone. Now it's going to show you on a map all the devices registered to your Apple ID if it can find them. Let's center in on just the one that we're talking about here. In this case it's an iPhone 7 Plus.
Now look at the upper right hand corner here and you'll find this little control panel for the iPhone 7 Plus. You can do a bunch of different things. One thing is you can play a sound. So this will play a sound on the phone. This is useful if you lost your iPhone but you know it's around somewhere in the house or, you know, it's nearby at work. You can have play this sound and you get that alert there on the screen. 
You can also go to the extreme measure of Erase iPhone. This is if you know it has fallen into somebody's hands where you don't want it. You just want it erased. But, lost mode is a little more interesting. Here you can put a phone number. So I'm going to put just a fake number now. I'm going to hit Next and then I can put a message. I can type anything I want and put it right there. Then I hit Done and it's going to put the iPhone into Lost Mode. Now look what happens on the screen. So it say Lost iPhone, this iPhone has been lost and it's got that phone number on there. So this could really help out if it's the case where somebody finds your iPhone and wants to help out, wants to actually get the phone back to you.
Notice on here it said on the screen it said unable to suspend cards. That's because this is not a main iPhone that I'm using. Typically if you had Apple Pay cards setup on this, then it would go ahead and suspend those. So you get some protection there for things like that. 
It's also important to note that this locks the iPhone. Now of course it's probably going to automatically lock anyway. You've got a passcode set, right. So it should be locked  by the time somebody finds a lost iPhone. But if for some reason you haven't locked your iPhone or you have your Settings setup so it's not going to lock with a passcode, doing Lost Mode will lock it. 
That's how you do it. Now I can go and click Lost Mode and I can stop Lost Mode. You see I'm getting email updates on the changes of location. That's another thing that you're going to get about this phone that's really cool. I can go and stop lost mode because say I found the phone. Then my phone can return to normal operation. I will have to reenter the Apple Pay information or at least reauthorize it. But other than that all my information is still there. 
So this really helps if you've lost your iPhone. It's a great piece of technology to be able to use as long as you remember to make sure that Find My iPhone is turned on, on your iPhone.

Comments: 4 Responses to “Setting Up and Using iPhone Lost Mode”

Ash

7 years ago

When signing into a iCloud.com on any browser to put iPhone in Lost mode, isn’t 2 factor authentication required? With the iPhone lost that can be difficult. I had a personal experience like that recently.

Gary Rosenzweig

Ash: No, there is specific way to access Find My iPhone at iCloud.com when you have lost your phone. You can see that when it asks for your two-factor code, right at the bottom. There is a little "Need to find your device?" and a Find My iPhone button. You still need your ID and password, of course.

Oh perfect! Thanks for clearing that up. I brought that up because someone had managed to hack into my iCloud and put my iPhone into lost mode. I managed to recover my iCloud but was able use 2 factor because the texts were coming through on my watch..if you know what I mean. Thanks for putting up these great videos!

Jimmy

Thank you again for such a helpful lesson. You sure provide easy to understand advice

Comments Closed.

Setting Up and Using iPhone Lost Mode

Comments: 4 Responses to “Setting Up and Using iPhone Lost Mode”

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