Software · guide

How to turn off Find My iPhone, and when you should not

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 23 September 2026 · 10 min read

How to turn off find my iphone is three taps and a password, and every page answering it gives you the three taps. Rather fewer explain what the password step is protecting, which matters because there is exactly one good reason to do this and several bad ones.

So the honest summary is short. If the phone is staying yours, leave Find My on. It costs nothing, it is the difference between a lost phone that might come back and a lost phone that is somebody else’s, and Apple’s own advice is simply to keep it turned on. The reason to turn it off is that the phone is about to stop being yours.

Skipping the first of those has a price, and it is published by the people who pay it out. Verizon, listing why a trade-in comes back worth less than the quote, gives four reasons: that “the condition of the device was different than originally stated in the submission”, that “we received a different device than expected”, that it was “submitted after 30 days” — or that “the activation lock is turned on (e.g., Find my iPhone® or the Find My app)”. That is a carrier rather than Apple, and it settles a practical question a support page cannot: a phone posted off with Find My still on is not merely awkward for whoever receives it, it is worth less money to you. Other carriers and trade-in services set their own terms; the one quoted here is Verizon’s.

And the same facts read from the other side, if you are buying. A used iPhone whose previous owner did not do this is not a bargain — it is a device that will ask for somebody else’s Apple Account password when it is set up, and Apple will not remove that for you on request. Before money changes hands, the phone should be sitting on the setup screen, not on the seller’s home screen. A phone that is still signed in has not been released, whatever the seller intends.

The parts fact, which is genuinely obscure and can cost money. Apple: “When Activation Lock is on for a device, it can also protect individual parts… If your device has a previously used part from a different device that was protected by Activation Lock when the part was removed, that part is ineligible for service under the Apple Limited Warranty or an AppleCare plan.” A cheap screen or battery from an unknown source can therefore make a repair unserviceable later, and the Parts and Service History screen in the sequence above is where that shows up.

One case that is not covered here. If you cannot turn Find My off because you do not have the Apple Account password, that is not a step this page can give you — it is the feature working exactly as designed. The route back is account recovery with Apple, using proof that the account is yours. Anything offering to remove an activation lock without that is selling either a scam or a stolen phone, and there is no third option.

The steps, the description of Activation Lock, the note about parts and the trade-in sequence are quoted from Apple’s own documentation, read on 22 August 2026 and listed below. The advice to buyers, and the framing of when this should and should not be done, are ours.

Not covered here. It will not give you three taps without saying what the third one protects. Turning off Find My turns off Activation Lock, and Apple says so.

It will not help remove an activation lock without the account password. That is the feature working, and everything offered in that space is a scam or a stolen phone.

And it will not let a buyer take a phone that is still signed in. The setup screen is the only proof that it has been released. What holds instead is simple: the description of Activation Lock and the trade-in sequence are Apple’s own, read on the dates this page names.