When you sign in, you might be asked to enter a code sent to a trusted device. If you buy through the links in our items, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence. On a Mac, press Command + Spacebar and start typing “Search” to locate the Find My application.
You'll know that this feature is active if, when you turn off your phone, you see the phrase “The iPhone can be found after turning it off” under the shutdown button. If you want to make an insurance claim for your stolen iPhone, you'll need a criminal police number, so you'll need to report the theft of your iPhone. Unfortunately, even if they see that your iPhone is located on a specific street or development, it's unlikely that the police will go looking for it, because, no matter how good Find My iPhone is, it's not so good that they can be sure that they will find it in the right direction. There have been cases of people trying to recover stolen iPhones using Find My iPhone and have been injured or worse.
If you lost your iPhone and didn't set up Find My, you might expect it to be possible to find your iPhone by phone number. As with the option to leave a previous message, if you follow the steps to erase the iPhone, you'll also have the option to add a message that will be displayed on the iPhone if someone recovers it. When you report an iPhone has been lost or stolen to the police, you may need to give them your iPhone's serial number.
