How to turn off Find My iPhone before you sell

Find My iPhone is brilliant right up until the day you sell. It ties the phone to your Apple ID so a thief cannot wipe and resell it, and that same lock means no buyer can do anything with a phone that still has it switched on. Every buyback service checks for it, and every one of them, including us, will send a phone back rather than buy one that is locked. Here is how to switch it off properly.

On the phone itself: Settings, tap your name at the top, Find My, Find My iPhone, and switch it off. It asks for your Apple ID password, which is Apple making sure it is really you. That is the whole job, and it takes about two minutes including finding your password.

Phone already dead, lost in a drawer, or refusing to charge? You can do it remotely. Sign in at iCloud.com, open Find Devices, choose the phone, and remove it from your account. The lock lifts the next time the phone reaches the internet, and for a phone that never will, removal from the account is what our bench checks for.

One warning worth reading twice: never sell a phone with Find My still on, and never share your Apple ID password with a buyer who says they can sort it out on their end. No legitimate buyer needs your password. Anyone asking for it is not planning anything good.

When you sell with us, the checkout asks you to confirm Find My is off before we send the pack, precisely so your phone does not make a pointless round trip. Do the two minute job first and the rest of the sale runs on rails.