How to Find a Lost IPhone Even When It’s Turned Off
With the iOS 15 update, Apple has further improved Find Me. This feature usually allows you to find, locate and erase your lost Apple devices, but now some iPhones with iOS 15 can be tracked even after the iPhone is turned off (which is the first thing a thief does). How it works? Can’t you turn off your iPhone completely?
How does offline iPhone tracking work?
Apple will now use its low-power U1 chip to keep tracking the iPhone’s location even after it is turned off. This feature is enabled by default after installing iOS 15 on a compatible iPhone (iPhone 11 and newer, including the latest iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro).
When the iPhone is turned off, Apple continues to launch its Bluetooth Low Energy chip through a dedicated secure applet. The rest of the device is completely disabled (including the always-on processor used for background tasks such as “Hey Siri” requests).
Another part of the equation has to do with Apple’s Ultra Wide Band U1 chip. As with AirTags , your iPhone will continue to send cryptographically secure beacons to other Apple devices. And when someone walks past your turned off iPhone, it picks up those beacons and safely transmits that information using the Find My network.
If you are looking for a more technical explanation of what’s happening under the hood, read this blog post Nerdina and this branch in Twitter Hector Martin .
How to completely shut down your iPhone
Apple makes this offline iPhone tracking a safe way, but you might argue that your iPhone is technically not completely powered off. Therefore, if you want to turn off your iPhone completely, there are two ways you can do it. First, when you are about to turn off your iPhone, press the little “iPhone can be found after shutdown ” button. From here, you can select the Temporarily Turn Off Search option to completely turn off your iPhone just once.
If you are looking for a more permanent solution, you need to turn off Find My Network, which is usually not recommended for obvious reasons. To do this, open the app “Settings” and go to the Apple ID> iCloud> Find My> Find My iPhone and disable “Find my network.”