How to Turn Off Find My for Apple Watches
March 1st, 2021
Today's video is going to be about how to turn off the "Find My" feature on an Apple Watch (transcript below).
Right here we've got an Apple Watch Series 6. This process is going to be mostly the same for most of the different Apple Watch models. Now why would you want to turn off the "Find my Watch" feature in the first place? Well suppose you have sold your Apple Watch to someone else or you're trying to sell your Apple Watch. Whoever you sell it to, they will not be able to pair your Apple Watch to their iCloud account if you still have your "Find my Watch" feature turned on for the Apple Watch. And the way this happens typically if you have an Apple Watch like this one, and you go to reset it—you go to your settings here, then you'll go to reset and you can see here most people just click on this "Erase All Content and Settings" option. Apple even warns you here that erasing will not remove the activation lock and what that means is you can erase the watch and that's great, but it's still going to be linked to your iCloud account so when someone else takes that Apple Watch and tries to test pair it or pair it to their iCloud account they will be unable to do so. They'll get an error message stating that the watch is already locked to someone else's iCloud account. So when you remove the Apple Watch the preferred way to do it is actually through the iPhone that you've got it paired to. So here we've got an iPhone 12 Pro Max and we're going to go into the watch app and then we're going to go under "General" and then at the very bottom of here we've got our "Reset" page. So this is actually going to reset and unpair the Apple Watch if we click on that button there, and that's really the preferred way to do it. But, a lot of people don't do that and instead they simply go on their Apple Watch here and they click on this "Erase" and the watch looks reset as if it's ready to go, but then the next person gets it and it is locked. So let me show you how we're going to do that and I'm going to show you the method that if you don't have the Apple Watch in your possession anymore how you can remotely get it removed. Now if you've got the Apple Watch in your possession still you can remove it the right way using the iPhone to unpair it and erase it all in one. But if you don't have the watch with you anymore you're gonna have to do it remotely. So let me show you how that works.
Now we can turn the "Find my Watch" feature off from just about any computer that's connected to the internet. We want to open up a web browser. I've got Safari opened here and the url we're going to go to is icloud.com/find. And that last part is very important because that takes us right to the page we need to be on. So again, icloud.com/find. It's going to have you log in using the iCloud ID that is linked to the device so I'm going to go ahead and log in there and enter your password. And then it should take us to a page with a map in the background just like this one here. Now at the top of this page there's going to be a pull down menu and you can select which device you want to remove here. So you can see right now I've got an iPhone and I've also got a watch listed on the "Find my..." feature here on this iCloud account. So we are going to click on the watch here and it's going to pull up this side little menu in the top right corner. Now you might be thinking "Well, how do I remove the watch? I don't see a remove option. I just have Play Sound, Lost Mode, and Erase." Well here's the catch—Apple makes this just a little bit confusing. So in order to remove this watch from your iCloud account you first have to initiate the erase request and it's kind of a fail-safe. I think they want to make sure that you have indeed erased the watch before you remove it because once you remove it you can't go back and erase it. But, it is a little bit confusing so you do need to click this "Erase" option first—the little trash can. And when you click that it's going to bring up a confirmation message. We'll go ahead and click the "Erase" and then for security it's going to have you re-enter your User ID and your password again. Now if you've got two-factor authentication enabled for your account, which is definitely a good idea, it's going to send a code to another device on your iCloud account. So we just enter in that two-factor authentication code. And if it's the first time you're using this browser you're gonna get this message here. We can just click "not now."
All right so you can see now it's giving me a couple options here in the dialog box. If I want to enter a phone number I can, but remember we just want to get this watch removed from the iCloud account. Now if you lost your watch and you wanted a phone number to appear on that watch so that whoever finds it can call you and see who it belongs to, this is where you would type that in. But, if you're selling your watch or giving it away to someone else then right here you're going to leave this blank and just click the "Next" option. Same thing here on the "Message" option. If you lost the watch you could type in here, "hey if found please return to..." and list your name, contact information, etc. But, again we're just trying to remove it here so we're going to leave that blank. Then we click the "Done" button. So now Apple is going to try to remotely erase the device and assuming it's connected to the internet you—know paired through another iPhone where it's connected to the internet—that erase should go through within just a few seconds. However if your watch is not connected to the internet...maybe you've already shipped it out to someone else...sometimes you have to click the "Stop Erase" option first and I don't know if you caught that on the screen, but for just a split second there was a "Stop Erase Request" option there. And so if your watch is not connected to the internet, it's not going to show you this remove option until you click the "Stop Erase Request" first and then it'll show the "Remove from Account."
So once you get to this screen here it's confirming that it did indeed erase the watch, and the most important step now is to click this final "Remove from Account" option. If you don't click this button it's still going to be linked to your iCloud account and it's going to be in the lost/stolen mode. So definitely go back in here and click the "Remove from Account" option. It's going to give you another confirmation box—we'll click "Remove" and just like that our watch is removed. Now when you're all done double check up here at the top under "All Devices" and make sure that watch no longer shows up there. Now when you go up to "All Devices" if for some reason you still see the device in the list here, and remember it was an Apple Watch, then that means something didn't go as planned. I'd go ahead and try it again a second time and just make sure you got all the steps down. But, assuming that device is missing from this list here then you've successfully removed it from your iCloud "Find my..." feature.
Now let me just interject one important distinction to make here. A lot of times folks will land on the "Account Settings" devices page just like this one here. And they will go ahead and click on their device and then click on the "x" thinking that that's going to remove it from their iCloud account. And this is really just like a history of which devices you signed into on iCloud. And so removing it here is actually completely different from the "Find my Watch" or "Find my iPhone" section of your iCloud account. So just make sure you are indeed under the "Find my iPhone" section. I know it's kind of confusing because maybe you're removing a watch or an ipad, but basically the "Find my iPhone" is also for iPads, Watches, MacBooks...and so forth. And the way to know that you're on the right page is that you've got a map in the background. So just remember you're looking for a map in the background and that signals that you are indeed on the "Find my Watch" or "Find my iPhone" page.
Well, I hope you found this video helpful. Here at Jay Brokers we deal with these sorts of issues quite frequently as you can imagine. We are a risk-free secondhand marketplace. We buy all sorts of gadgets and guitars to cameras and collectibles—pretty much anything worth over $100 bucks that's easy to ship. So if you're looking to sell your Apple Product or maybe you've got a watch that you're looking to upgrade, or an iPhone. Definitely check us out—you can get an instant cash offer on over 2,500 common products on our website 24/7 from the convenience and safety of your home. A couple things our customers really appreciate about Jay Brokers is, first off we always pay the agreed upon amount for the agreed upon item—no bait and switch gimmicks. And, secondly we always send payments out on the next business day after receipt, rain or shine. So if you've got something to sell and it's worth over $100 bucks, chances are we will consider it. Go ahead and check us out online at jaybrokers.com that's j-a-y-brokers.com and get yourself an instant offer from the convenience and safety of your home 24/7. We would sincerely like to earn your business so if you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Thanks for watching!
