Erase Your Device
We’re all quite rightly concerned about our private data stored on our most personal devices—the ones we carry with us all the time. Apple has done a stellar job in locking down access to an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. But there’s still a fear: what if someone guesses our passcode or passphrase, or uses some new cracking technology to break in?
Apple offers an excellent option that can assuage some fears. You can remote erase your device by sending it an irreversible command that takes place immediately if it’s connected to the internet, or as soon as it’s next connected—if it ever connects again.
Erase Everything But a Mac
The last resort in some cases (or first in others) is a remote wipe, in which all the user data on an iOS/iPadOS device is erased.
An erased device that has Find My enabled before erasure and remains associated with an Apple ID cannot be unlocked without the account password due to the Activation Lock feature mentioned earlier.
The erase option lets you provide a phone number and message so that a person who found (or stole) your device can get in touch. The device is essentially useless to them without the password.
Once you erase a device (or if someone else has), Find My can find its location only if it’s an iPhone or iPad running iOS 15/iPadOS 15 or later. Before that release, erasing a device disables its ability to send Find My tracking data when connected to the internet.
It’s a multi-step process to prevent accidental erasure; you can cancel at any stage until step 6:
In the Find My app, tap Erase This Device.
You’re warned that everything is about to be erased. Tap or click Continue (Figure 78).
Figure 78: Start by making sure you know what comes next. (White space removed vertically for compactness.) Optionally enter a phone number at which you can be reached after it’s erased, and tap Erase.
Enter your Apple ID password and tap Erase. If this is another member’s device, accessible via Family Sharing, enter their Apple ID password.
You have a brief moment during which you can tap or click Cancel Erase—but I wasn’t fast enough in my testing. It’s pretty quick!
If the device is online, the Erase action immediately wipes all your data. With an iPhone 7, I found it took about 30 seconds to perform operations and reboot; with newer devices, it will be even faster.
If the device is offline, the erase begins as soon as it next comes online through any networking method.
Wiping your device isn’t as bad for your stored data as it sounds. All iOS and iPadOS devices are set by default to back up the unique data that’s stored on them, like settings, passwords, and documents created by or associated with apps. These backups can be either local to a Mac on a particular computer or remote to iCloud.
Apps are stored centrally, not in a backup, and restored from Apple’s servers; the same is true with synced books and purchased music, movies and TV programs. If you use iCloud Photos and iCloud Music Library, that media is stored in the cloud and synced. (If you’re not using either, you probably sync music with a Mac or Windows system. This is a good time to check that you’re up to date with syncing.)
If you erase your device, and then either recover it or obtain a new device, you can restore from your most recent backup. If you were syncing any items to your device through Photos, Music, or other apps or tools in macOS, you can then sync them back to the device. For items stored in iCloud, the restore process downloads them again.
If any unique data was syncing from your iPad or iPhone to iCloud, Dropbox, Exchange, or another service, you should retain changes up to the moment the device disconnected from a cellular or Wi-Fi network. You will lose only changes made on the device between the last sync (push, fetch, or manual) for each account and the remote wipe.
Erase Your Mac
The process of starting is nearly the same as with a mobile device:
Select the device in any Find My app and reveal the action sheet.
Tap or click Erase This Device.
Review Apple’s warning. Click Continue.
Enter a message that will be displayed to someone who has or finds the machine and click Erase.
Enter your Apple ID password and tap Erase. If this is another member’s device, accessible via Family Sharing, enter their Apple ID password.
The selected Mac will now be erased. How long that will take depends on hardware features. For nearly every Mac that can run macOS 12 Monterey and all Macs that can run 13 Ventura or 14 Sonoma, erasure is nearly instantaneous. see How Does the Erasure Happen So Quickly? above.