Is an iPhone Really Off? How Find My Works After You Power It Down

No, a switched off iPhone is not completely off. If Find My and the Find My network are turned on, Apple says a supported iPhone can still be located for up to 24 hours after it is turned off, or up to 5 hours in power reserve mode, because its Bluetooth radio keeps sending short, encrypted signals that other Apple devices relay. You can stop this once at the power off screen, or permanently in Settings, but turning it off also removes your best chance of finding a lost or stolen phone.

iOS really does stop, and so do your apps and the phone's Wi-Fi and cellular reporting. What keeps going is a small slice of hardware: a Bluetooth chip running its own firmware, and on some models other radios tied to the secure element. This post covers what Apple documents about that behaviour, how the Find My network keeps locations private, what a 2022 TU Darmstadt paper found inside the low power mode, and how to decide whether to leave it on. Every Apple fact comes from Apple's support pages, its Find My privacy notice or the August 2026 Apple Platform Security guide.

Key takeaways

• With Find My iPhone and the Find My network on, a supported iPhone can be located for up to 24 hours after it is turned off, or up to 5 hours in power reserve mode.
• Under "Slide to power off" there is a control labelled iPhone Findable After Power Off. Apple's Personal Safety User Guide says tapping it lets you temporarily turn off the Find My network for that shutdown.
• The Find My network is end to end encrypted. Per the Apple Platform Security guide, the phone broadcasts a public key that changes about every 15 minutes, finders encrypt their location to that key, and Apple never holds the decryption key.
• To stop it permanently, turn off Settings > [your name] > Find My > Find My iPhone > Find My network. Apple warns that with Find My and the Find My network off, you cannot locate, lock or erase a lost or stolen device.
• Activation Lock is tied to Find My iPhone, not to the network switch. Turning off only the Find My network leaves Find My iPhone and Activation Lock in place.
• Stolen Device Protection (iOS 17.3 or later) requires Find My, and you cannot turn Find My off while it is enabled.
• TU Darmstadt researchers (WiSec 2022) found that Bluetooth, NFC and Ultra Wideband keep running after power off on recent iPhones, and modified Bluetooth firmware on a jailbroken research phone. It was a design concern, not a remote attack.

What actually runs when an iPhone is "off"

On a modern iPhone, power off is closer to a deep standby for a few specific jobs than a hard cut. The table summarises the states Apple and the researchers describe, and names the source for each.

The third row answers the question. Slide to power off and do nothing else, and a supported iPhone with default settings keeps announcing itself to nearby Apple devices for up to a day.

What Apple documents about finding an iPhone that is off

The 24 hour and 5 hour windows

Apple's iPhone User Guide page "Add your iPhone to Find My" describes two switches under Settings > [your name] > Find My > Find My iPhone. The first is the Find My network, which lets Find My locate the device when it is offline. The guide then adds the key sentence: on a supported iPhone, turning on the Find My network allows you to locate your iPhone for up to 24 hours after it is turned off, or up to 5 hours when it is in power reserve mode.

The second switch, Send Last Location, uploads the phone's location to Apple when the battery becomes critically low, while iOS is still running. If the battery has run out, Apple's "Use Find My" article says you can see the last known location in the Find My app for up to seven days, after which Find My shows "No location found".

Apple's Personal Safety User Guide repeats the 24 hour figure from the other side: when Find My iPhone is on, your device may be found through the Find My network for up to 24 hours after it has been powered off or disconnected from the internet.

Which iPhones support it

Apple's pages consistently say "a supported iPhone" without listing models on the pages we fetched. The research paper discussed below studied the iPhone 11, 12 and 13 series running iOS 15, and found that iOS 15 introduced Find My in the low power mode. Many guides say "iPhone 11 and later". We could not confirm that model list on an Apple page, so treat it as a lead and check Apple's current documentation for your model before relying on it.

Is it on by default?

For most people, yes. The Apple Platform Security guide says that if a user has Find My iPhone enabled, offline finding is turned on by default when they upgrade a device to iOS 13, iPadOS 13.1, macOS 10.15 or later. Apple's Find My privacy notice adds that when you sign in to iCloud with your Apple Account, certain Find My features are enabled on supported devices, including participation in the Find My network.

The "iPhone Findable After Power Off" message

When you open the power off screen on an iPhone that is set up this way, a line under the "Slide to power off" control reads iPhone Findable After Power Off. Apple's Personal Safety User Guide explains what it is for. If you need to get to a safe location and want to turn off your device, but you are concerned that someone else may use this feature to find your location, you can temporarily turn off the Find My network when you power off by tapping iPhone Findable After Power Off and following the onscreen instructions.

Apple frames this as temporary: it applies to that shutdown, not to your settings. The TU Darmstadt researchers reported that disabling it required the passcode as of iOS 15; that detail is from the paper, not Apple, so today's prompt may differ.

What stays powered when an iPhone is off

Apple's documentation describes behaviour (findable for 24 hours, Express Cards in power reserve) rather than listing which chips stay energised. The research paper is the main public source on the hardware side. Here is what each says.

Bluetooth for the Find My network

The Apple Platform Security guide says Find My works offline by sending out short range Bluetooth signals from the missing device that other Apple devices in use nearby can detect. Apple's "How to turn on Find My" article describes the Find My network as a crowdsourced network of over a billion Apple devices that use Bluetooth to detect a device or accessory and report its approximate location back to the owner.

The researchers describe the same thing from inside the phone. On a user initiated shutdown, the iOS Bluetooth stack is terminated and the Bluetooth chip keeps running on its own, sending Find My advertisements that were prepared before shutdown. In their measurements on iOS 15, 96 advertisements of 15 minutes each were configured during a user initiated shutdown, which is where the 24 hour figure comes from: 96 times 15 minutes is 24 hours.

NFC and Express Cards with power reserve

The second feature Apple documents is Express Cards with power reserve. The Apple Platform Security guide says that if iOS is not running because the iPhone needs to be charged, there may still be enough power in the battery for Express Card transactions with a payment or transit card set as the Express Transit card, or access cards with Express Mode turned on. The NFC controller performs those transactions as it would with iOS running, with only a haptic confirmation. Apple adds that this feature is not available when a standard user initiated shutdown is performed. In other words, power reserve is the low battery state, not the state you get by sliding to power off.

Ultra Wideband

Apple's Platform Security guide describes the U1 chip, which uses Ultra Wideband to let the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max and later models precisely locate other U1 equipped Apple devices. Apple's "Use Find My" article says that if your iPhone has Ultra Wideband you can use Find Nearby to see distance and direction to an AirTag or to AirPods Pro 2 or later.

Apple does not say, on the pages we fetched, that UWB stays powered after shutdown. The research paper does: on recent iPhones, Bluetooth, NFC and UWB keep running after power off, and all three chips have direct access to the secure element. The paper ties UWB in the low power mode to Digital Car Key 3.0, which supports Express Mode in power reserve. In short, Apple documents Bluetooth after shutdown (through Find My) and NFC in power reserve (through Express Cards); UWB in the low power mode is documented by the researchers.

How the Find My network keeps it private

A phone that broadcasts while off sounds like a tracking beacon. Apple's design aims to make it one only its owner can use. These details are from the "Find My security" chapter of the Apple Platform Security guide.

Keys generated on the device

When offline finding is turned on, the device generates an elliptic curve P-224 key pair. It also creates a 256 bit secret and a counter that starts at zero. Apple says the private key and the secret are never sent to Apple and are synced only among the owner's other devices, end to end encrypted through iCloud Keychain.

From the secret and the counter, the device derives a fresh symmetric key for each period, and from that key it derives a short lived key pair. In Apple's notation:

SK_i       = KDF(SK_(i-1), "update")
(u_i, v_i) = KDF(SK_i, "diversify")
d_i        = u_i * d + v_i      (mod the order of the P-224 curve)
P_i        = u_i * P + v_i * G

Here d and P are the long term private and public keys, and d_i and P_i are the short lived pair for period i.

Rotating public keys about every 15 minutes

When the device is offline, it periodically broadcasts the current public key P_i in a Bluetooth payload. Apple chose P-224 so the public key fits in a single Bluetooth payload. About every 15 minutes the key is replaced by a new one derived from the next counter value, so the device cannot be tracked by a persistent identifier, and Apple says the derivation is designed to prevent the different public keys from being linked to the same device.

How finders report and how the owner decrypts

Any Apple device within Bluetooth range with offline finding enabled can read the broadcast key. Using an ECIES construction, the finder encrypts its own current location to that public key and sends it to Apple. The encrypted report is stored under an index computed as the SHA-256 hash of the public key.

To locate the missing device, the owner's device estimates the range of counter values for the search period, regenerates the matching private keys and index values, asks the server for reports under those indexes, downloads the encrypted locations and decrypts them locally. Reports from several finders are combined in the Find My app to produce a more precise location.

What Apple can and cannot see

Apple's guide makes three specific claims. Apple never has the decryption key, so it cannot read the location a finder encrypted. The traffic finder devices send to Apple contains no authentication information in its contents or headers, so Apple does not know who the finder is or whose device has been found. And Apple says it does not log information that would reveal the finder's identity and retains nothing that would let anyone correlate finder and owner. The owner sees a decrypted location with no indication of who found the device. Apple's Find My privacy notice puts it more simply: the Find My network uses end to end encryption so that Apple cannot see the location of any offline device or reporting device.

Who can see a switched off phone's location

Encryption protects the location from Apple and from the finder. It does not protect it from anyone who can sign in as you. Apple's privacy notice says that if a device is turned off or erased, its location is also visible to members of the owner's Family Sharing group with whom the owner has chosen to share location. The Personal Safety User Guide likewise says the location of your device is visible in the Devices tab on your other devices and to anyone in Family Sharing you share your location with.

So the practical privacy risk is rarely a stranger decoding Bluetooth beacons. It is a person who knows your Apple Account password, holds one of your signed in devices, or sits in your Family Sharing group, which is the situation Apple's Personal Safety guide was written for.

What the 2022 TU Darmstadt research found

In May 2022, Jiska Classen, Alexander Heinrich, Robert Reith and Matthias Hollick of the Secure Mobile Networking Lab at TU Darmstadt published "Evil Never Sleeps: When Wireless Malware Stays On After Turning Off iPhones". It appeared on arXiv on 12 May 2022 and was presented at ACM WiSec 2022, held 16 to 19 May 2022 in San Antonio, Texas. The authors say they responsibly disclosed all issues to Apple. We cover the concepts only; the paper describes tooling, and nothing here is a how to.

Low power mode is a hardware feature

The paper calls the state the phone enters on shutdown the low power mode, or LPM, entered when the user switches the phone off or when iOS shuts down because the battery is low. The researchers found that this support is built into the hardware. The power management unit can turn chips on individually, and the Bluetooth and UWB chips are wired to the secure element in the NFC chip, which stores secrets such as car keys that need to be usable in LPM. In their hardware table, covering the iPhone XR and XS through the iPhone 13, the UWB chip and its LPM support appear from the iPhone 11 series onward. Their conclusion is that because LPM support is based on the hardware, it cannot be removed with a system update.

The 24 hour limit and the "before first unlock" behaviour

In their iOS 15 analysis, the phone stores the next 24 hours of advertisements on disk when it powers off, even if Find My was disabled at power off. If the phone is turned back on, it can decrypt those cached advertisements before the first unlock and keep sending them, then stops when the 24 hours run out, rebooted or not. The researchers noted the theft side effect: a thief can be sure Find My is disabled after 24 hours, even if they power the phone on. Apple's current 24 hour figure is consistent with this, but Apple has not documented the caching details on the pages we read, and later iOS versions may differ.

Bluetooth firmware that could be modified

The headline result was that the Bluetooth firmware patches iOS loads onto the chip were checked with CRCs but not signed by the chip vendor. On a jailbroken research iPhone, the team modified that firmware so their own code ran while the iPhone was off. Their wording in the conclusion is that Find My after power off "turns shutdown iPhones into tracking devices by design", and that tracking properties could be changed by attackers with system level access.

What the research does and does not mean for you

Read the threat model carefully. The malware demonstration needed system level access to iOS, obtained with a jailbreak on an older iOS version, and the authors noted devices might behave differently on the latest release. It was not a remote attack on an ordinary phone. It does show that "off" is a software state, that the radios still running after shutdown run their own firmware, and that a compromise of iOS before shutdown could in principle influence what happens after it. The authors' recommendation was for Apple to add a hardware switch that disconnects the battery, which they argued would help privacy conscious users and surveillance targets such as journalists. No Apple page we reviewed describes such a switch, so for people in that threat model, the practical answer is distance, a different device, or a phone that is not with them at all.

How to truly turn it off

There are three levels, from lightest to heaviest. Each one has a cost.

Option 1: one shutdown, at the power off screen

Open the power off screen, tap iPhone Findable After Power Off under "Slide to power off", and follow the onscreen instructions. Apple describes this as temporarily turning off the Find My network for that power off. Your settings stay as they were, so the next ordinary shutdown is findable again. Use it for one trip or one night.

Option 2: turn off the Find My network switch

Go to Settings > [your name] > Find My > Find My iPhone, then turn off Find My network. Apple's privacy notice gives the same path for iOS and iPadOS devices.

What changes, according to the Apple Platform Security guide: the device no longer acts as a finder for other people's devices, and it is no longer detectable by other finder devices. You can still locate it as long as it can connect to Wi-Fi or cellular. Apple's Personal Safety guide states the cost plainly: disabling this feature means you cannot use it if your device is lost or stolen and powered down.

Option 3: turn off Find My iPhone entirely

Go to Settings > [your name] > Find My > Find My iPhone, then turn off Find My iPhone. Apple's privacy notice says this turns off Find My and Activation Lock on the device. Apple's Activation Lock article says your Apple Account password is required before anyone can turn off Find My. Apple's caution in the Personal Safety guide applies here in full: when you turn off Find My [device] and the Find My network, you are not able to locate, lock or erase your device if it is lost or stolen. Apple's "How to find your lost iPhone or iPad" article adds that if Find My was not turned on before the device was lost, it will not appear in Find My at all and you cannot mark it as lost or erase it remotely.

What stays on: Activation Lock

Apple's Activation Lock article says Activation Lock turns on automatically when you turn on Find My. Apple then stores your Apple Account on its activation servers and links it to the device, and your password is required before anyone can turn off Find My, erase the device, or reactivate and use it. On iOS 15 or later, a device protected by Activation Lock shows an "iPhone Locked to Owner" screen when it is turned on, and Apple says Activation Lock can also protect individual parts from reuse.

Activation Lock is attached to Find My iPhone, not to the Find My network switch. So if you choose Option 1 or Option 2, Find My iPhone is still on and Activation Lock still protects the phone. You lose powered off and offline finding, not the lock. Only Option 3 removes Activation Lock, and that is the setting Apple tells you to turn off before you sell or give away a device.

Stolen Device Protection and Find My

Stolen Device Protection is Apple's answer to a specific theft pattern: someone watches you type your passcode, then takes the phone. Apple's support article says it is available with iOS 17.3 or later and must be turned on before the device is lost or stolen. When the iPhone is away from familiar locations such as home or work, some actions need Face ID or Touch ID with no passcode fallback, and some critical changes add a one hour security delay followed by a second biometric check.

Biometrics are required for things like using saved passwords or passkeys, erasing all content and settings, and setting up or transferring an eSIM. Biometrics plus the delay are required for changing your Apple Account password, signing out of your Apple Account, adding or removing Face ID or Touch ID, and turning off Stolen Device Protection itself. Choosing "Always" under Require Security Delay applies these measures everywhere, not only away from familiar places.

The link to this post is direct. Apple says that to turn on Stolen Device Protection you need two factor authentication, a passcode, Face ID or Touch ID, Significant Locations, and Find My turned on, and that you cannot turn Find My off while Stolen Device Protection is enabled. Apple's lost device article adds that with Stolen Device Protection, Face ID or Touch ID is required to turn off Lost Mode, so a thief who knows your passcode is still locked out. For theft, Find My, Activation Lock and Stolen Device Protection are designed to work as a set. Turning Find My off to gain privacy also means giving up Stolen Device Protection.

Privacy versus theft recovery: who should leave it on

The default setting favours recovery. For most people that is the right trade, because the information is end to end encrypted and visible only to your own devices and the family members you share location with. The calculation changes when the main threat is a person who already has access to your account or your family group, or when you are a high risk target.

Step by step: check and set your iPhone

The configuration lives in Settings, not a terminal. Menu names follow Apple's current support pages and may vary slightly by iOS version.

1. See whether powered off finding is on. Open Settings, tap your name, tap Find My, then tap Find My iPhone. If Find My iPhone and Find My network are both on, a supported iPhone is findable for up to 24 hours after power off.
2. Decide on Send Last Location. On the same screen, Send Last Location sends the phone's location to Apple when the battery becomes critically low. It works with iOS running and is separate from the Find My network.
3. Check Location Services for Find My. Apple's "How to turn on Find My" article notes that to locate a lost device on a map you need Location Services on for Find My.
4. Turn on Stolen Device Protection if you keep Find My on. Go to Settings, tap Face ID & Passcode (or Touch ID & Passcode), enter your passcode, tap Stolen Device Protection and turn it on. If you want it everywhere, choose "Always" under Require Security Delay.
5. Review who can see your location. In the Find My app, check whom you share location with and who is in your Family Sharing group.
6. Check the power off screen. Look for iPhone Findable After Power Off under the slider; cancel to leave things as they are.
7. If you choose privacy over recovery, turn off Find My network on the Find My iPhone screen. Leave Find My iPhone on unless you also intend to give up Activation Lock, remote lock and remote erase.

If your iPhone is lost or stolen while it is off

Apple's lost device guidance comes down to a short sequence:

1. Open Find My on another Apple device signed in to your account, on a Family Sharing member's device, or at icloud.com/find, which Apple says needs no verification code.
2. Mark the device as lost. Lost Mode locks it with your passcode and suspends Apple Pay cards and passes. Apple notes the device only shows as online and in Lost Mode once it is turned on and connected.
3. Watch the location. Apple's Platform Security guide says you get a notification and email when an offline device is located, with an approximate address and time. You cannot play a sound on it or erase it while it stays offline.
4. If you have AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss, keep the iPhone in Find My until the claim is approved.
5. Report it to the police and your carrier, and ignore messages claiming it was found; Apple says it never sends them.

Act fast: powered off finding helps for up to 24 hours (5 hours in power reserve). After that you rely on the last known location, visible for up to seven days.

Common mistakes

• Assuming "off" means silent. With default settings on a supported iPhone, it keeps broadcasting for up to 24 hours. If that matters for a particular trip, use iPhone Findable After Power Off.
• Turning off Find My iPhone when you meant to turn off the Find My network. The first removes Activation Lock, remote lock and remote erase. The second only removes offline and powered off finding.
• Thinking encryption protects you from your own account. Anyone signed in as you, and family members you share location with, can see a turned off device's location. If someone else knows your password, change it first.
• Confusing power reserve with shutdown. Express Cards with power reserve work when iOS shut down because of a low battery, not after a standard user initiated shutdown.
• Selling a phone with Find My still on. The buyer will hit Activation Lock. Turn off Stolen Device Protection, then Find My, then erase.
• Leaving Stolen Device Protection off. It requires Find My and adds biometrics and delays when a thief knows your passcode.
• Reading the 2022 research as a remote attack. The malware demonstration needed system level access through a jailbreak. The lasting point is about design: radios run their own firmware while the phone is off.

FAQ

Can an iPhone be tracked when it is turned off?

Yes, for a limited time and only by its owner's account. Apple says a supported iPhone with the Find My network on can be located for up to 24 hours after it is turned off, or up to 5 hours in power reserve mode. Nearby Apple devices relay an encrypted location that only your devices can decrypt.

What does "iPhone Findable After Power Off" mean?

It is a line under "Slide to power off" telling you the phone will remain findable through the Find My network after shutdown. Apple's Personal Safety guide says tapping it lets you temporarily turn off the Find My network for that power off.

How do I stop my iPhone from being findable when it is off?

For one shutdown, tap iPhone Findable After Power Off on the power off screen and follow the prompts. To stop it permanently, go to Settings > [your name] > Find My > Find My iPhone and turn off Find My network. Apple warns that you then cannot use it if the device is lost or stolen and powered down.

Can Apple see where my iPhone is when it is off?

According to Apple, no. Finders encrypt their location to a rotating public key, Apple never holds the decryption key, and finder reports carry no authentication information.

Which iPhones can be found when powered off?

Apple's pages say "a supported iPhone" without listing models. The TU Darmstadt research studied the iPhone 11, 12 and 13 series and found the feature arrived with iOS 15.

Does turning off the Find My network turn off Activation Lock?

No. Activation Lock is tied to Find My iPhone. Turning off only the Find My network switch leaves Find My iPhone, and therefore Activation Lock, in place. Turning off Find My iPhone itself removes Activation Lock and needs your Apple Account password.

Does Stolen Device Protection need Find My?

Yes. Apple says you need Find My turned on to use Stolen Device Protection, and you cannot turn Find My off while Stolen Device Protection is enabled. It is available on iOS 17.3 or later.

Can someone else track my iPhone through Find My?

Not through the Bluetooth signal alone, because the keys rotate about every 15 minutes and the location is encrypted to keys only your devices hold. People who can see your device's location include anyone signed in to your Apple Account and Family Sharing members you share location with. Apple's Personal Safety User Guide covers how to review that access.

What happens if my iPhone's battery dies completely?

Apple says you can see the device's last known location in the Find My app for up to seven days. If Send Last Location was on, the phone tried to upload its location just before the battery ran out. If the phone shut down into power reserve, it may also be findable for up to 5 hours.

Where Safeguard fits

Safeguard does not locate phones, protect phones, manage devices or touch Find My in any way, and nothing in this post depends on it. Your iPhone's radios, firmware and Find My keys are Apple's to build and update. The connection is narrower: the research is a reminder that every device runs software you did not write, and that knowing which components are present and keeping them current is what matters. For the software your team builds and ships, including mobile apps, backends and container images, Safeguard scans repositories, images and SBOMs, matches components against vulnerability databases and shows which of your projects contain a given component and version. That is where it helps, and it is a different problem from finding a phone.

Fix it without waiting for upstream

Your iPhone's firmware will only ever be fixed by Apple, so this section is not about the phone. It is about the apps and services your team ships to phones, which are built from open source dependencies that need the same patch discipline as any other code.

Whatever the vulnerability, most of the risk sits in two gaps. The first is the time between a fix being published and that fix actually running in your production builds. The second, and worse, is the time before any fix exists at all, while a maintainer works out a patch and a release schedule. Waiting through both gaps is a habit, not a requirement. Safeguard gives teams three ways to close them.

1. Autonomous remediation: pull requests, not tickets

When a fixed version exists, Safeguard's Griffin models open a tested, policy gated pull request that moves the affected dependency to the safe version. You can run it on one repository or in bulk across every project that carries the vulnerable version. Remediation covers eight categories, including dependencies, licenses, security posture and findings. Reachability analysis ranks the vulnerable code paths your application actually calls first, so the first pull requests you merge are the ones that matter most. Autonomous remediation ships switched off, with every category set to Manual, so your team decides how much runs on its own and what still needs a human approval.

2. Gold Open Source: the safe version in seconds, free

gold.safeguard.sh is free and needs no login. Search any CVE or package to see affected and fixed versions, CVSS, EPSS, CISA KEV status and a recommended safe version, or use the "Am I affected?" checker. The same data is available through a free read API, README status badges and RSS threat feeds. The safeguard-sh/gold-scan-action GitHub Action can fail a build on a known exploited vulnerability, on any known vulnerability, or never, so a version you have just removed cannot quietly come back in next week's merge.

3. Gold Registry: start from components that are already fixed

registry.safeguard.sh provides hardened, drop in replacements for upstream packages and container images. Every Gold artifact is held continuously to zero exploitable critical or high CVEs, zero malware and a completed license check, with SLSA L3 or higher provenance, a Sigstore signature and a public evidence page you can hand to an auditor. An artifact loses its Gold badge if it regresses. Teams can point their own package directory at the registry so hardened equivalents resolve without changing how developers install anything.

When upstream has no fix yet, or will not ship one, Safeguard first works to get the fix accepted upstream. If the issue is severe or upstream will not move, Safeguard builds a fork, fixes the vulnerability there and publishes a hardened Gold build, so you are not stuck on a maintainer's release schedule. You can also request a hardened, compatibility tested build of a specific package. This fork and patch flow is in early access today, so ask which packages it covers before you plan around it.

One honest limit: when the vulnerable code lives in a vendor appliance, a hosted service or an operating system runtime you do not build yourself, the fix still has to come from that vendor or distribution. The steps above apply to the open source dependencies and container images you build and ship, which is where most teams carry the largest and least tracked share of their exposure.

See how Safeguard would help

These demos show dependency and code workflows for software you build. None of them finds, tracks or secures a phone. You can download Safeguard and follow the CLI docs to try them on your own projects.

This demo is a real Android session with the Safeguard phone app. You send work to a computer running the Safeguard CLI, and when the CLI wants to run a command, you approve it on the phone with Allow once, Allow for turn or Deny. The phone is a remote control for work on your computer; it is not doing anything to the phone's own security or location.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

This demo is a real CLI session: install, open the interactive terminal, ask it to fix the lodash CVE in a repository, and watch it read the finding and advisory, ask before each command, move lodash to 4.17.21, run npm install and npm test with approval, and print a summary without pushing anything. If your team ships an iOS or Android app with a JavaScript or web layer, the same approve each step flow applies to bumping a vulnerable dependency in that app's manifest.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

This demo connects Claude to the Safeguard MCP server with OAuth and lets you choose which tools Claude can use. Once connected, you can ask in plain language which of your projects contain a particular component and version, and get the answer from your own scan data rather than from memory.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

For related reading, our post on what a factory reset removes and what it leaves behind covers what happens to a phone or laptop before you hand it on, and rebuilding a developer machine after a compromise covers the steps when you cannot trust a device any more.

Quick check

Sources

• Apple Platform Security: Find My security
• Apple Platform Security guide, August 2026 (PDF), including "Locating devices that are offline" and "Ultra Wideband security in iOS"
• Apple Platform Security: Express Cards with power reserve
• Apple iPhone User Guide: Add your iPhone to Find My
• Apple iPhone User Guide: Locate a device in Find My on iPhone
• Apple Personal Safety User Guide: Find My and location sharing
• Apple Support: How to turn on Find My on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac
• Apple Support: Use Find My to locate your lost Apple device or AirTag
• Apple Support: How to find your lost iPhone or iPad
• Apple Support: Activation Lock for iPhone and iPad
• Apple Support: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone
• Apple: Find My and privacy
• Classen, Heinrich, Reith and Hollick: Evil Never Sleeps: When Wireless Malware Stays On After Turning Off iPhones (arXiv 2205.06114, WiSec 2022)

Last reviewed: 23 October 2026. Apple updates Find My and iOS settings regularly; check the linked Apple pages for the current wording on your iOS version.