Skip to content

June 7, 2011

7

Find My iPhone Brings Improved Offline Device Support

Apple has released an update to their free Find My iPhone offering, which greatly improves the support for tracking devices that are offline at the time. Note that this doesn’t mean you can track an iPhone or iPad that is turned off, or out of signal range (not possible). Instead, if a device is offline when you try to locate it, Apple will later send you an email with its location the next time that device gets back online. Thanks to this, it’s no longer necessary to constantly be checking the Find My iPhone app/webpage. Here is Apple’s summary of the changes:

  • When you are unable to locate a device because it is offline, you will receive an email if the device comes online and is located.
  • Ability to remove an offline device from the list using the app.

Note, it appears this updated feature is only available using the Find My iPhone app (version 1.2) available in the App Store – it is not yet available in the MobileMe web interface. I assume it won’t be updated until the new iCloud Find My iPhone web interface is launched. [Update: I was right.]

For more information on how to use this great free service to recover your iOS devices, check out Protecting and Recovering Your iPhone and iPad from Loss and Theft.

7 Comments Post a comment
  1. ana sanchez
    Jun 8 2012

    i lost my ipad in the philippines how can i locate my ipad it? pls help

  2. Joe brown
    Mar 1 2013

    Can the find my iPhone app be set up to deceive the actual location of the phone? In other words be somewhere else and the map shows a different place?

  3. Joe brown
    Mar 1 2013

    Joe brown
    Mar 1 2013
    Can the find my iPhone app be set up to deceive the actual location of the phone? In other words be somewhere else and the map shows a different place?

  4. sheila
    Oct 21 2014

    My daughter lost her ipod. It has find my phone and location services on. It is on (but has gone to sleep). She last used it about 27 hours ago. I do not believe it is stolen, but she may have dropped it outside in friend’s yard, or may be in their house??? It says offline. Does this mean that it is out of wifi range, or can it say this just if it is asleep. Wifi at that location as well as GPS is not a strong signal. It would be a great help to know if offline means for sure not in the house.

  5. Mohammad Ali Jafarzadeh
    May 10 2015

    Hi,
    I’ve lost my daughter’s IPad a few days back, am not sure if “Find My IPhone” is activated on it.
    I took all steps to put a custom message to be appeared on its screen when it’s connected to a Wi-Fi or goes online somehow but it has a passkey which it makes it impossible to use.
    My question is if I can remove the passkey to enable the finder to see my message and contact me or not, is this a proper way to increase my chance to find my lost device or not.

  6. May 10 2015

    Hi, unfortunately you can’t remove an iPhone or iPad’s passcode remotely. Is it logged into FaceTime or Skype that you could try calling it on?

  7. Nov 26 2017

    Apple iPad has been sent by daughter from US two months ago, due to sudden change in network connections here, Ipad is asking for Apple id & password, I don’t remember did I fix any Apple ID or password, but after typing different IDs & passwords for number of times, it has been totally stopped moving & it looks that it has been unencrypted. Please help me to solve to reset ID & password for my Apple iPad in order to restore it fully my disabled iPad.

Share your thoughts, post a comment.

(required)
(required)

Note: HTML is allowed. Your email address will never be published.

Subscribe to comments

css.php