Owning the latest iPhone doesn’t come cheap. I just bought an iPhone Xs Max and a major chunk of my savings is gone. With such a price tag comes extra responsibility. And now I’m always worried about losing my phone. In fact, I panic even if it slides between my couch cushions and I can’t find it.
Calling your number from a borrowed phone or using ‘Find my iPhone’ is the first thing anyone would try. But what if your phone is in silent mode or just lying around under a seat in Uber where no one would even hear it ring. Fret not, I have gathered a few situations to how to find your lost iPhone. Let’s check them out.
Find a Lost iPhone Without Find My iPhone
1. Use the Apple Watch
If you are in the complete Apple ecosystem, then your Apple Watch might be of great help at times. If your iPhone happens to go missing somewhere in that messy bedroom of your’s you can simply use to ping feature to locate your phone via Apple Watch.
Just slide up the Apple Watch menu and tap the phone icon. Your iPhone will ping in a certain penetrating tone. The phone rings irrespective of being in silent mode or low ringer volume. Another cool factor about this feature is, if you tap and hold the ping button on your watch, the iPhone starts flashing. Your iPhone needs to be on the same Wi-Fi network or connected to your Apple Watch via Bluetooth for this to work.
2. Say ‘Hey Siri’ loudly
Now, this may sound a little weird and to people looking at you even weirder. But a good way to find lost iPhone when it’s stuck under the couch or bed is to say ‘Hey Siri’ as loudly as you can. Earlier the feature was limited to when your iPhone was on charging. But now almost all models allow ‘Hey Siri’ off the charging pod.
If your iPhone is near you, it will light up and respond with Siri speaking to you. Try this in every room or location you think your iPhone is misplaced. Just give the people around you a heads up.
3. Use Find my Phone
Okay, I know, I said, how to find a lost iPhone without finding my iPhone, but since this method is so useful, it’s worth mentioning one more time. To get this working, you should have the Find My iPhone set up, but most all Apple devices have ‘Find my phone’ already setup when you first install the device.Â
To track your iPhone using find my iPhone, use one of your other Apple device like you iPad or Mac. Or borrow someone’s computer and go to https://www.icloud.com/#find. Here enter your iCloud username and password to log in.
When you log in with your iCloud account, it’ll show all your Apple products with their current or last seen location. Obviously, they need to be connected to the internet. If your phone didn’t have the internet while it was lost, you are out of luck.
From here you can Track your phone’s current or last location. The feature also gives you options to ring your iPhone, again irrespective of the ringer volume or silent mode. Additionally, you may even display a message on your phone’s lock screen and lock the phone. And if nothing works, you also have an option to erase your iPhone remotely if you wish to save your data from going into wrong hands.
4. Use Find Friends
Not so commonly used this feature might just prove to be the one that saves the day. Find Friends is another one of Apple’s native apps to connect and share location details with friends and family.
If you have shared your device location with friends and family you can quickly connect with them to know your phone’s current location. The app gives you real-time location updates and that too without any notification. So if you’re lucky you will still be able to track your phone without being noticed.
The app also allows you to set certain parameter specific notifications so you can know if your phones leave a certain location. This might come in handy when you’re on the move towards your phone’s location.
Consider a Third Party App
Apart from the native apps and features, there are many third-party tracker applications available in the App Store. Sharing your location with friends and family on these apps might also prove to be useful. In fact, if you’re using a family locator app you have one more shot at finding your missing phone.
Third-party family locator apps can be very sneaky at times and do the job with absolute silence. Most third-party location sharing apps don’t require any system profiles to be installed and just location permissions suffice. In fact, some services don’t even require an app to be downloaded on to the phone. A mere link is shared which could be accessed from any web browser to see the current location of a device.
Such third-party location sharing apps include Glympse, Life 360, Foursquare Swarm and many more. Many of you might not know it but your very own Google Maps also has a service of itself to share location indefinitely. You can find the location sharing option in the Google Map menu bar. The function works cross-platform and isn’t restricted to the Android system. To know more about such apps read out article on family locator apps mentioned hereunder.
Read:Â 7 Best Family Locator Apps for Android and iOS
Closing Words
So, there you go, these were step by step instruction on what to do if you lose your iPhone. Although we don’t promise that any of these options will surely bring you back your iPhone. We do believe that in case you can’t locate the phone within a few hours, you must file a report with the authorities and service provider. There are a couple of insurance options as well in case you aren’t on the Apple Care programme. In case you do get lucky and find any of these useful, do let us know your experience in the comments below. Unfortunately, there is no effective way to find an iPhone that is turned off.
