Find My
Also known as: Find My iPhone, Find My app, locate device
Find My is Apple’s service for locating your devices, AirTags, and shared friends and family on a map, and for locking or erasing a lost device. It runs in the background using almost no storage and is separate from iCloud storage space.
- Locates devices, AirTags, and shared contacts on a map
- Activation Lock ties a lost device to your Apple ID
- Uses negligible storage; backups enable a clean restore
What Find My does
The Find My app combines locating your Apple devices and items (like AirTags), sharing your location with people you trust, and the Activation Lock security that ties a device to your Apple ID. You manage it in Settings > [your name] > Find My.
Even when an iPhone is offline, the Find My network can relay its approximate location through other nearby Apple devices, all end-to-end encrypted, so a lost device can still be found.
Storage and erasing a device
Find My itself uses negligible storage. Its relevance to space is the Erase iPhone option: if you remotely wipe a lost device, everything on it is removed — so a recent iCloud backup is what lets you restore your photos and data to a replacement.