Purpose
Use this policy to remotely disable Find My on corporate Macs and—optionally—turn off the linked Find My Mac iCloud setting and/or warn the user first. Removing Find My prevents “Activation Lock” headaches when devices are re-issued, sold, or recycled.
1 . Requirements
Item | Details |
Supported OS | macOS 10.7 or later |
MDM enrolment | The Mac must already be enrolled in Swif (User-Approved or ADE) |
Apple ID | The policy cannot remove a consumer Apple ID; it simply disables the Find My services that rely on it |
2 . Adding the policy
Device Management ▸ Policies ▸ Add Policy.
Choose Apple Find My Policy and click Configure.
Fill in a name/description (optional).
Configure the two switches below, then assign the policy to devices or groups.
3 . Policy settings
Setting | Options | What happens |
Disable Find My Mac iCloud Setting when Find My is disabled | True / False | True also unticks System Settings ▸ Apple ID ▸ iCloud ▸ Find My Mac after Swif disables Find My. Use this to stop users from re-enabling it manually. |
Notify user to turn off Find My | True / False | True shows a native toast + Swif Desktop banner telling the user that Find My will be deactivated. (Good for BYOD; optional for 1-to-1 corporate Macs). |
Tip: leave both switches False if you simply want to force-disable Find My silently.
Note, when enabling both settings (Disable Find My Mac iCloud Setting when Find My is disabled and Sending notifications to disable Find My), sending notifications to disable Find My will have a higher priority. Swif will send a notification to the device owner to turn off Find My on the Mac app first before deploying the policy to disable Find My.
Only after the device owner has disabled Find My on their devices, we will only deploy the policy to disable Find My. We don't want to disable Find My settings before the device owner disables Find My.
This is before disabling Find My settings.
This is after disabling Find My settings. You can see the Find My setting is On and won't be able to change it if we disable the Find My settings before it turns off.
If device users have trouble turning off Find My from system settings > iCloud, they can do it from icloud.com. The pre-requisite is the device needs to be offline when turning off Find My on icloud.com.
4 . What users see
Scenario | End-user experience |
Notification = False | No prompt; Find My stops, and Find My Mac iCloud setting is toggled per your first switch. |
Notification = True | The user receives a banner: “Your organisation is turning off Find My. Click OK to continue.” Swif proceeds as soon as the user dismisses it. |
5 . Verifying the result
Open the Device Inventory ▸ Mac ▸ Policies tab – the status should show Applied.
On the Mac, System Settings ▸ General ▸ Activation Lock should read Disabled.
(If you set the first switch to True) iCloud ▸ Find My Mac appears unchecked.
6 . FAQ
Question | Answer |
Does this remove the Apple ID from the Mac? | No, it only disables Find My. The user’s Apple ID remains signed-in for iCloud, App Store, etc. |
Can users re-enable Find My? | Only if they have admin rights and you leave Disable Find My Mac iCloud Setting set to False. |
What about iOS/iPadOS? | Find My cannot currently be disabled via MDM on iPhone/iPad; Apple restricts that to macOS. |
7 . Best-practice rollout checklist ✅
Audit which Macs already have Activation Lock enabled (Swif Inventory ► Security tab).
Apply Find My Policy to your “All Macs” or “Corporate Macs” group.
For shared or loaner devices, set Notification = False and Disable iCloud Setting = True.
Verify the policy status after 15-30 minutes.
If a Mac is offline, the change applies the next time it checks in.
Need help? Open the green chat bubble in Swif or email support@swif.ai.
Swif Policy glossary – see All Apple policies article for context.