Find My iPhone is one of the most important features of an iPhone and other Apple devices. With this feature enabled, you can track, lock, erase, and remotely access your iOS device whenever it’s lost or stolen. To keep your Apple device protected, it is highly recommended to keep Find My iPhone enabled on it. In case your device is stolen or lost, it will be easier for you to locate and protect it from unauthorized access. Nonetheless, it may also be necessary to turn off Find My iPhone feature especially when erasing or resetting your iPhone.
Turning off Find My iPhone is considered a challenge and others deemed it impossible unless you know the password. But if you don’t, then it would cause you some troubles. Fortunately, other resourceful iOS device users found an unorthodox approach and still managed to turn off the Find My iPhone service even without using a password. The said tweak is outlined below.
Feel free to refer to the outlined steps below if ever you need help disabling Find My iPhone without password. The steps are applicable to an iPhone that runs in the iOS 12 platform.
Turn off Find My iPhone by erase your iCloud account information (iCloud lock bypass)
This method can be considered an iOS 12 exploit, a security flaw in Find My iPhone iCloud lock that will let you turn off the Find My iPhone feature without password. And here’s how it works:
- Tap to open the Settings app from your iPhone Home screen.
- Navigate to the iCloud section.
- If prompted to enter your password, type in any random number and then tap on Done.
- After you input a random number, you will see a warning message saying that the password you input is incorrect. Tap OK and then select Cancel. Doing so will route you back to the iCloud section.
- At this point, tap on Account and then erase the description.
After doing so, you will be taken back to the iCloud main section and from there you will see that the Find My iPhone feature is already turned off.
Alternatively, you can reset your Apple ID password first and then after the password is reset, you can turn off the Find My iPhone feature seamlessly. Your Apple ID password can be reset through email, password, and security questions, using two-factor authentication, and two-step verification. The easiest and quickest password reset method is the two-factor authentication. Here’s how it’s done:
- Launch the Settings app from your iPhone Home screen.
- Navigate to [YourName]-> Password & Security menu.
- Then tap to select the option to Change Password.
- Follow the onscreen prompts to change your password.
After resetting the password, you can turn off Find My iPhone on your device.
Turning off Find My iPhone using DNS
Other tech savvy iPhone users were able to find a solution and bypassed Find My iPhone using a foreign DNS server. This trick however only works on iOS devices running iOS 8 or iOS 9.
- To do this, navigate to your iPhone Settings-> Wi-Fi menu, then tap on the information (i) icon next to your Wi-Fi network to open the DNS server information. Then change the DNS IP address to 104.155.28.90 (if you’re in the US). After changing the DNS IP address, tap the back arrow then tap Done to save the changes.
At this point, you can proceed to disable Find My iPhone using the standard method. While some people found success with this trick, there is no guarantee that it will work the same wonders on all iPhone models.
For other options and possible solutions, try contacting Apple Support and let them know about what you wanted to do.
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