Find My Mac

Apple's location-tracking service for Macs; enabling it automatically activates Activation Lock.

Find My Mac is part of Apple's Find My service, which lets owners locate, lock, or erase a Mac remotely from another Apple device or iCloud.com. Find My is opt-in but enabled by default during initial Setup Assistant. Turning Find My on for a Mac implicitly enables Activation Lock for that device.

For sellers, Find My is the single setting that has to be off before the device changes hands. With Find My on, even a fully factory-reset Mac will demand the original owner's Apple ID at Setup Assistant. Disabling Find My requires signing into the seller's iCloud account on the Mac and toggling it off; it can't be done remotely from another device.

For buyers, asking 'is Find My off?' is the same question as 'is Activation Lock off?'. They're effectively the same setting from the buyer's perspective.

Macfax checks Find My status on every report. If Find My is on at issuance time, the report records that state; the seller should disable it and re-run before sending the report to a buyer.

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