Without much effort, I could think of a bunch of situations where locating an iPhone might come in handy: Have you lost your phone? Would you like to know where your children are? Are you going to organize a gymkhana with your friends?
For these and other situations, we have prepared this mini article for you to learn how to locate your iPhone, in which we teach you both the official Apple method and some secure third-party applications that we believe can be useful for tracking an iPhone. in any situation.
Use Find My iPhone, Apple's official tool
One of the fastest ways to track an Apple phone is to use the feature Search my Iphone which is integrated into iCloud, which is activated by default when the Apple ID is set up on a phone. If you still want to check if it is active, you must enter Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone and make sure the feature is turned on.
Once this has been verified, if we want to locate where our iPhone is, we must do it through the iCloud official website. Once inside, we can check the devices we have and their location. If you want to know a little more about this, our colleague Andy Acosta wrote an article that may interest you about how Find My iPhone works.
In the event that you have lost your phone, you can use the function "Lost Mode" (Lost Mode) that will allow you to lock the device and display a personalized message on its screen. This feature will also allow you to track the location of the device if a new SIM card with cellular data access is inserted into your iPhone phone.
Third-party applications: only use options that are verified
As for third-party apps to locate your iPhone or other people's phones, there are quite a few options on the AppStore, but not all are equally reliable. Although it is true that Apple does a fairly exhaustive sweep and analysis of what enters its application store (a fact that does not happen with other systems such as Android, whose PlayStore policies are very lax), there are a few applications that can work very well to locate an iPhone phone
Life360: a tracking application aimed at all types of users
This application is oriented to be able to do monitoring of all types of users: from children, to the elderly or drivers. As a strong point, it is compatible with all types of iOS and Android smartphones. Safe360 is a complete suite that covers the monitoring of all age groups and does so through multiple very interesting options:
- The app shows the real time location of all members of a family group.
- Allows you to set a security perimeter in an area, so that if the phone leaves it, the app administrator will receive a notification. If the phone leaves the “safe zone”, you will know it instantly.
- Life360 allows you to see the location history of group members in a given period of time.
- Members family group they can text and share pictures in a private in-app chat.
- Includes a emergency button that allows to send an alert to all members of the group in case of emergency.
- Life360 also offers a function of safe driving that detects when a group member is driving and sends safety alerts if dangerous driving behavior is detected
Find My Kids: the ideal option if you want to track your children
This application allows us locate the location of a child in real time and receive notifications when the child arrives or leaves a predefined place, establish safe zones and chat with him just like the previous application, but adds a low battery warning as an extra functionality: in the event that the child's phone child is running out of battery, the application administrator will receive a low battery warning so you can tell your child to charge the phone as soon as possible.
Glympse: An app for sharing with friends, with an emphasis on privacy
This application is oriented to share the location among the group of people you want, without the need for them to be part of the family group. It is more oriented to be used by friends who decide to share locations, such as in an outdoor activity, going on a hiking trail or even playing a game of treasure map. The bulk of Glympse's functions are linked to these uses:
- Tracking real time location: The application allows users to share their location in real time with friends or family by limiting the time that the phone can be tracked
- messages and chats to people who are in the same app group.
- WebApp No need to install anything extra: In addition to sharing location through the app, users can share a link that allows other people to see their location in a web browser.
- Multiple Device Compatibility: from smartphones, tablets, wearables and in-car entertainment systems and integration with other services like iMessage, Slack and Alexa
We hope that the information on how to locate an iPhone will be useful to you and if you have any questions or clarifications, do not hesitate to leave us a comment!