There’s a lot of really nifty stuff at iCloud.com. I’ve watched it grow over the years since it was released with iOS 5 a few years back. Personally, the email and Find My iPhone are the features I find myself using all the time on the web interface of iCloud.
Find My iPhone (FMIP) is wonderful. It’s a little confusing having “iPhone” in the title, as it works on iPad, iPod touch, and the Mac to some degree. I frequently misplace my phone somewhere at home, and I know it has to be somewhere close because I haven’t left the house that day. FMIP to the rescue! I go to my computer (much larger, and therefore a bit less likely to misplace) and visit iCloud.com, click on the button labeled “Find my iPhone” (it will looks like a radar screen) click on that and you’ll be in the FMIP screen. It gives you a map with the last known location of all the devices logged into that iCloud account.
It is important to understand that an internet connection is required for the device to communicate that location information to the iCloud servers. This is also a way for the device to know where it is. Cellular enabled devices also have a built in GPS, so the device knows exactly where it is, providing it’s able to get a GPS signal. Many wifi networks provide location information, but if the device leaves that, and is not cellular enabled, it will not be able to determine where it is or communicate that to the iCloud servers.
At the top there will be a bar, with “devices” in the middle. Click that and you’ll get a drop down menu of all the devices on that account with FMIP turned on. On mine, I have a happy green dot right next to my iPhone as well as when that location was last updated, but the other devices have a sad, dim, gray dot with “Offline” under the device name. Right now I see one dot on the map, and that’s my iPhone right here with me. If my iPad wasn’t powered off, it would see it at home, providing it hadn’t evolved legs and wandered off somewhere…
From this menu I have a few options: Play Sound, Lost Mode, and Erase iPhone. Play Sound is the button I push regularly. It makes this loud sound that helps me reunite with my device that stayed where ever I put it and then forgot about. There’s Lost Mode which will allow me to give it a lock code that’ll keep prying eyes from the contents of my iPhone (or other iDevice) as well as display a message to a (hopefully) good Samaritan that will bring it back to me. There’s not much incentive to hold on to an iPhone in lost mode, as FMIP is also an “activation lock” making the device useless to anyone that doesn’t have the username and password of the account that last had FMIP turned on. This feature has been very successful at deterring theft of iPhones, because they’re simply worthless to any nefarious party when it’s turned on. Finally, there is Erase iPhone, which will erase all of the content but will continue to display the message that you have set.
There are many other features of iCloud.com, but each one would have me going on nearly as long as I just did for FMIP. While I hope you never lose your device, I expect FMIP to assist you in any event where you seem to have misplaced it.