7th
How to use Find My Friends on iPhone/iPad without entering your iTunes password every time
This isn’t strictly a tech blog, much less a how-to blog, but I figured I owe the Internet a handy how-to for all the ones it gives me.
With Apple’s release of the latest iPhone/iPod/iPad operating system, iOS 5, came an app called Find My Friends, which does precisely what its name implies using the devices’ GPS. There are other apps that have been around a while and do this pretty well (see also: Google Latitude), but they’re beyond the scope of this post.
Click the image to download the app.
The trouble with Find My Friends is that, for security, it prompts you for your iTunes password every time you open the app. This is a deal breaker for a lot of people and creates a lot of friction in the name of security.
Here’s how to get around it:
Find My Friends allows you to forego the password if you set a passcode lock on your phone, a four-digit PIN you have to enter every time you unlock the screen. You can set a passcode in Settings > General > Passcode Lock. But this too is security friction I don’t want. So…
In the same settings module, you can tell your phone how often you want to be prompted for the passcode. By default, the phone requires it each time the screen is locked or goes to sleep. If you tap “Require Passcode” in the passcode settings, however, you can choose to only be prompted after 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or an hour.
Choose an hour.
Now you can use Find My Friends without being prompted for an iTunes password AND without having to enter a passcode every time you unlock your phone’s screen.
If you’re less cavalier than I am about the security of your phone’s contents in the wrong hands, consider that Find My iPhone (or iPad, or whatever), designed for tracking stolen devices, allows you to wipe the device remotely. You should have Find My iPhone activated anyway, folks. In iOS 5, it’s in Settings > iCloud > Find My iThing.
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