Disabling Find My on your Apple Devices

Find My is an incredible iCloud feature that allows you to remotely locate or lock your device if it is lost. The feature can also be a pain point if an employee enables the feature on a company-owned Mac, locking it to their Personal Apple Account. You may no longer have access to the employee who locked the computer, meaning the Mac cannot be unlocked without contacting Apple and providing proof of ownership. Even if you can reach the employee and they’re cooperative, you may need to have them push a remote wipe from iCloud before they can disable the feature and separate it from their Apple ID.

How can we prevent this from happening on new devices or those already in management? The process involves two main steps:

1. Deploy an MDM Profile to lock Find My on a per-device basis
2. Ensure all users have disabled the service

1 - Prevent Enabling Find My

This task is handled by deploying an MDM Profile to all of your enrolled Apple devices. It's important to note - once the profile is in place, users can still try to turn the feature back on, but it will not save the change. Bear this in mind, as many expect the setting to be hidden or non-interactive.

Another important detail is that this profile does not disable Find My if the user has turned it on. Apple at present does not support a method to turn this feature off without user consent and interaction. All we can do here is lock the setting if it is currently off.

2 - Turn Off Find My

With the profile in place, no new users should be turning on Find My. Next, we'll need any users who have the feature turned on to disable it. Ntiva can assist with finding the Mac users who have Find My on, but Apple currently doesn't support a method to identify iPhones or iPads using this feature. We recommend asking your team to review their settings to confirm the feature is off:

• Mac: System Settings > Apple Account > iCloud > See All > Find My Mac
• iPhone/iPad: Settings > Apple Account > Find My  > Find My Phone

Once users have turned off Find My and have the profile in place, it cannot be enabled again. 

If you'd like to disable Find My on your Apple devices, please reach out to your Account Manager and we'll work with you on this change.