How to Set Up Find My Mac and Locate, Lock or Erase your Mac

If you are an iPhone user, then Find my Mac is same as Find my iPhone. You can find, lock or erase you’re lost or stolen Mac with Find My Mac. So, before anything happens and your Mac goes missing you must set up Find my Mac on it. Once you set it up on your Mac, then you can locate your mac from iCloud.com very easily.

Set up Find My Mac

You must have an Apple ID to set up Find My Mac. If you already have an Apple ID, then you must use the same ID and Password to set up Find My Mac or Find My iPhone on all the macOS or iOS devices.

  1. Click the Apple menu and select “System Preferences” from the menu.
  2. Hit the iCloud icon in the system preferences window.
  3. Enter the Apple ID email and password. If you don’t have one, then click the “Create new Apple ID” button and follow the on-screen instructions.
  4. Once you successfully logged in with your Apple ID, make sure Find My Mac checkbox is enabled. If the Location services are off for Find My Mac, then you will see “Details…” button next  to the “Find My Mac.”
  5. To enable Location Services, go to the Apple menu > System Preferences and click “Security & Privacy” icon. If Enable Location Service is disabled and not checked, click the orange lock icon and enter the administrator username and password to allow changes.

When Location services are enabled and Find My Mac option is checked in the iCloud preferences then you successfully enabled the Find My Mac.

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How to Find your Mac

After following all the step above, you must make sure you can find and get the location of your Mac. To find your mac location on the Map, you can either use Find My iPhone app on your iOS device like iPhone/iPad or use a Web browser on another Mac or Windows computer. Windows web browser must meet the system requirements of iCloud.com.

  1. Open a web browser on Mac or Windows and go to iCloud.com website.
  2. Enter the Apple ID email and password.
  3. When you successfully sign in to icloud.com, you will see different apps icons. Click the “Find My iPhone” app icon and wait for it to load the location of your devices.
  4. Click the “All Devices” menu above and select the MacBook to find its location on the Map.
  5. When you select a device, not only you can locate your Mac on the Map when its connected to Wi-Fi you can also do the following.
    • Play a sound: Click the “Play Sound” icon, this will play a sound on your Mac that helps you to find a lost Mac that you think is nearby.
    • Lock: When you think it’s lost and you couldn’t find it then you can lock it with a code so nobody can use it.
    • Erase Mac: This option will erase all the content on our Mac remotely and lock it with a passcode to make sure nobody can use it.

Before using erase option try to find it on the Map and play sound on it. Because when you wipe it, you can’t use Find My iPhone app. However, you can view the last location or Mac where it was connected to Wi-Fi

If your Mac is not online and you try to do anything above. All the actions take place when your Mac connected to Wi-Fi or is online next time.

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