Does ‘Find My’ Work Internationally? Using Find My iPhone/Mac/iPad Abroad

The “Find My” feature is a location tracking service available from Apple for most Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, AirTags, and more. Find My is unique in that it can be used to share your location, keep track of your people’s locations like your friends, family, and loved ones who share their location, but also as a way to locate lost or stolen devices.

With the Find My service, you can quickly see where a person, AirTag, or a device is on a map, and if its your own device, you can lock it down, make it play a sound, or even erase it.

But what if your or your loved one is traveling internationally? What if you’re using an Apple device abroad? Does Find My still work abroad, in other countries? What if the person or device is on a boat in the ocean, or on a cruise, in another country?

These are all reasonable questions to ask, and that’s what we’re here to discuss.

Does Find My Work Internationally to Find a Person, iPhone, Mac, AirTag, etc?

Yes. As long as the person, AirTag, or device has an active cellular connection or wi-fi connection, and the Find My service is enabled along with Location Services, you will be able to use and track devices or locate people abroad.

To locate someone, or a device, internationally, all you need to do is use Find My as usual:

1. Open the “Find My” app on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or iCloud
2. Choose the person or device you wish to locate
3. See the person (or the AirTag/device) on a map

As you can see in this screenshot example, Find My is working to locate a person who is in an international airport, and it still works just fine. This works exactly the same to locate devices using the Find My service as well.

You can even use the notifications feature of Find My to be alerted when someone arrives or leaves a destination, which can be very helpful for international traveling.

Can I be found if I’m in another country with “Find My” by someone back home?

Yes, assuming you have Find My enabled on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and you have an active Internet connection, you will be findable using the Find My service, even if you’re in another country abroad, by someone who is back home.

This makes this feature super useful for travelers, since anyone with access can quickly check in to see how a trip is going, your transit progress, if you made it to a destination, and many other uses.

You can also use this feature to track your luggage, baggage, and packages, if you placed an AirTag within those items.

Does Find My Work if the Person / Device /AirTag is on the Ocean, Sea, or a Lake?

Yes, as long as the the person or device has an active internet connection (cellular or wi-fi), Find My will work, even if they’re in the middle of the ocean, out to sea, or on a lake.

For example, if someone is on a cruise, you can still use Find My to locate them on a map. Or if you’re on an international trip and out to sea, and you’re worried you left your device behind somewhere, you can use Find My to check to see if it’s with you, or somewhere else.

Can you get directions to someones location, or a devices location, if they are abroad?

Yes, you can, again assuming the device or person has an active internet connection. And, with an added caveat; the person or device must have some sort of land connection.

Usually it’s impractical to want to have directions to get to someone or something abroad, but it is possible, and Find My will work with Apple Maps to route a destination, as you can see in this screenshot example:

Does Find My work just as well abroad?

Generally speaking, Find My will work just as well abroad and internationally as it does domestically, but there are some important points to consider.

Remember, Find My works by triangulating and location devices through a combination of location data, including GPS, wi-fi, and cellular data, and so the most accurate locations will be with devices that have a cellular connection, like an iPhone.

You may end up seeing an “Approximate Location” for a person, AirTag, or device, depending on the network connectivity of that person or device, and the infrastructure of a particular international location.

In international locations where infrastructure is lacking or insufficient, or if the person or device is located where there is no networking infrastructure at all (or no cellular or GPS coverage), the feature may not work. This is the same domestically by the way, where if a device or person ventures off into the wilderness they typically will not be locatable on the Find My network, until they return to cellular coverage or network coverage again.

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As you can see, the Find My feature works internationally, to locate people or devices, as long as the person or device has an active internet connection.

Since Find My is such an integral part of the iCloud experience and Apple ecosystem, it really is great to know it works abroad, and just as well as it does domestically – in most cases anyway.

Use Find My for some peace of mind, whether you’re locating your Apple devices, and AirTag item, or keeping an eye on your loved ones.

Do you use the Find My feature? What do you think of its capabilities, both for keeping track of devices, and for locating people? Have you ever used the Find My feature internationally when your or someone else was traveling? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.