How to Find a Lost Phone (and Lock It Remotely)
Losing a phone is stressful, but you can act from any other device in minutes. The trick is to move quickly, in the right order: locate it, ring it, lock it, and only erase it as a last resort.
Follow these steps
- Open the finding service from another device. On iPhone, open Find My on another Apple device or in a web browser. On Android, open Find Hub on another device or in a web browser, and sign in with the same account the lost phone uses. If you cannot sign in, recover the account first, since every later step needs it.
- Check the phone's location. The map shows the phone's last known location. If it is somewhere familiar, such as home or work, go there and use the next step. If the location looks wrong or old, the phone may be off, out of battery, or without a connection, and the location will update when it comes back online.
- Ring the phone, even if it is on silent. Use the Play Sound or Ring option. The phone will ring loudly even if it was set to silent, which is exactly what you want if it is down the back of a sofa or in another room. Do not use this repeatedly in a public place where someone else has the phone.
- Lock the phone and show a message. Use the Lock or Lost Mode option to lock the phone with its passcode and display a message with a number where you can be reached. This protects your data and gives an honest finder a way to return it. Do this as soon as you believe the phone is not simply misplaced at home.
- Contact your carrier if the phone is truly gone. If the phone is lost and you cannot recover it, ask your carrier to suspend the line so nobody can run up charges on your number. Your cloud account lock still protects your data even if the SIM is removed.
- Erase the phone only as a last resort. Erasing removes your data from the phone, which is the right call if you believe it is stolen or will not come back. Understand the trade-off: after erasing, the phone can no longer be located, so only erase when you have given up on getting it back.
What NOT to do
- Do not erase the phone as your first step. Erasing stops you from locating it.
- Do not go to an unfamiliar location alone to retrieve a phone. If the location looks unsafe, lock the phone and contact the police instead.
- Do not remove the phone from your cloud account before you have finished locating or erasing it. Removing it breaks the connection.
- Do not share your account password with anyone offering to find the phone for you.
If the phone turns up after you locked it, unlock it with your passcode and everything is back to normal. If it does not turn up, your backup is what makes the loss bearable: your photos, contacts, and messages are waiting on your next phone.