In Summary
- Apple’s Find My network is super useful to track your iPhone’s location if you misplace it.
- But it wasn’t of much use if the phone had turned off or wiped by the thief. iOS 15 changes it for the good.
- Users will now be able to track their iPhone’s location even if its battery has drained out.
Apple’s Find My network is a great tool to track down your lost or stolen iPhone. But it was pretty useless if the thief turned off the iPhone and/or did a factory reset.
Not anymore.
With iOS 15, your iPhone can still be traced via the Find My network even when it is turned off. Apple’s iOS 15 seems to not completely ‘power off’ the phone, but rather remains in a low-power state and acts like an AirTag, allowing other iOS devices nearby to pick up its Bluetooth signal and track it.
As per a report by 9to5Mac, the above screenshot of the notification clearly mentions how “Find My” will help you locate your iPhone when it’s lost or stolen even when it is in power reserve mode or powered off.
Not just when the iPhone is stolen; this will be very useful even when you misplace the phone running out of battery, as you now have a chance of finding its location for several more hours. Apple asserts that the location tracking will keep working even if the phone is reset to factory settings while Activation Lock is enabled.
For whatever reasons (we can’t think of one), if you want to make your iPhone actually switch off completely, you can change the behavior in Settings and disable the low-power Find My mode completely.
Related Read: How to Turn off Location on iPhone
Apple is yet to detail how exactly this feature would work. The best information so far comes from the features page for iOS 15 where Apple says “The Find My Network and Activation Lock can locate your device even after it has been erased. To help ensure that nobody is tricked into purchasing your device, the Hello screen will clearly show that your device is locked, locatable, and still yours.”
Separation alerts will also be available, which alert the owner when an AirTag or compatible product has been left behind. Find My provides directions for finding the item.
AirPods Pro and AirPods Max may also be found using the Find My network. Using Bluetooth helps the user find their earphones or headphones by playing a sound. Recently, Apple opened up the Find My network to help track third-party accessories too.
We hope Google takes note of this feature of tracking switched-off phones and brings it to Android as well in the near future.