Find My iPhone

One of the nice features that I have been playing with since the iOS 5 upgrade has been, Find My iPhone.  What Find My iPhone does, is allow you to track your device, such as an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.  It will bring up a map and show you where your device is.  A great tool especially if it is stolen.  Find My iPhone will also allow you to send a sound & message to your device, remotely lock it, or even remotely wipe the device.  This makes this tool very useful in cases where you have simply misplaced it around the house, or if it was stolen.

Let’s start by enabling the Find My iPhone service.  First off you will need to have an iOS 5 device, and make sure you have setup the iCloud.  You can then enable Find My iPhone by going into Settings, then iCloud, and turning on Find My iPhone (or iPad, etc).  This setting allows your device to be tracked and accessed with your iTunes account remotely.

But how do we do access the device remotely?  There are two options for accessing your device remotely.  The first you can download the Find My iPhone App from the App Store.  This app will allow you to sign in with your iTunes account and track your device on a map, or any of the other features I described earlier.  But if you only have one iOS 5 device, what is the point of having the app on your device if you lose it?  Well simple, you can also access Find My iPhone from the iCloud Website.  Again, logging in with your iTunes account you can access your device and track it just like you would from the app.

So if you are worried about losing your iOS 5 device or having it stolen, you may want to make sure you get Find My iPhone setup on your device, so that if the unthinkable happens you will be ready.  Also, this is a great service if you have a child with an iOS 5 device and want to track / monitor them remotely.  In any case, it is refreshing to see this kind of security built into a mobile device as free, native functionality.  Another win for Apple.