If you own more than one Apple device, only one of them acts as "you" on the map. When friends or family look you up in Find My, they see the position of whichever device is currently set as your location device — usually your iPhone. Swap that to your Mac and everyone following you sees your Mac's location instead.
That sounds obscure until it bites. Leave your iPhone at home, take your MacBook to a café, and anyone checking on you sees you sitting at home. This guide shows how to change which device shares your location, on both iPhone and Mac, and exactly what changes for the people who follow you.
What "Use This Mac as My Location" actually does
Your Apple Account can be signed in on several devices, but Find My reports a single position for you as a person. The setting that decides which device provides it is called Use This iPhone as My Location on an iPhone and Use This Mac as My Location on a Mac. Turning it on for one device automatically takes the role away from the others — it is a switch, not something you can enable everywhere.
Two things worth being clear about:
- This only affects people sharing — your dot in other people's People tab.
- It does not remove any device from Find My. Every device still appears in your own Devices tab with its own location, and you can still locate it, play a sound on it, or mark it as lost.
How to switch your location to your Mac
The cleanest way is to do it on the Mac itself, because the setting always lives on the device you want to promote.
On the Mac
- Make sure the Mac is signed in to the same Apple Account as your iPhone, and that Find My Mac is on. Check System Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Find My Mac.
- Confirm Location Services is enabled under System Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services, and that Find My is allowed there.
- Open the Find My app on the Mac (in Applications, or search with Spotlight).
- Click the Me tab.
- Click Use This Mac as My Location.
If the button is greyed out or missing, the Mac is usually already set as your location device — or Find My Mac is switched off.
On the iPhone
The mirror-image setting sits in the same place on iOS:
- Open the Find My app.
- Tap the Me tab.
- Tap Use This iPhone as My Location.
Tapping this on your iPhone switches your location back off the Mac. That is how you undo the change.
Check Share My Location is on at all
None of this matters if sharing is switched off entirely. On iPhone, look at Settings › [your name] › Find My › Share My Location. That screen also shows which device is currently acting as your location, which makes it a quick way to confirm the change took effect.
What changes for people following you
- Your pin moves to wherever the Mac is. If the Mac is a desktop iMac or Mac mini, your location becomes effectively fixed at that address.
- Nobody is notified. There is no "switched devices" alert — people just see your dot in a different place.
- Accuracy usually drops. Macs have no GPS and rely on Wi-Fi network positioning, so expect a rougher fix. A laptop with Wi-Fi off may not report at all.
- Arrival and departure notifications follow the new device. If someone has a "notify me when they leave work" alert set on you, it now triggers on the Mac's movements, which for a desktop may mean it never triggers again.
- A closed laptop stops updating. A sleeping Mac reports its last known position, so people may see a stale timestamp — a common cause behind a Find My location that will not update.
- The word "Live" may disappear from your card, since a Mac rarely streams a continuously updating position. See what "Live" means in Find My.
When switching to the Mac makes sense
- Your iPhone is broken, lost, or away for repair. Promoting the Mac keeps you visible to family instead of vanishing from the map.
- You work from a fixed desk and would rather colleagues or family see a stable location than a phone that wanders.
- You are travelling without your phone and want the laptop to represent you.
For everyday use the iPhone is almost always the better choice: it has GPS, a cellular connection, and it is the device you actually carry.
If it does not stick
- Same Apple Account on both. Two different accounts cannot share one location identity. Not sure which account a device uses? See how to find your Apple Account email.
- Find My enabled on both devices, with Location Services turned on.
- Give it a few minutes. The change propagates through iCloud rather than instantly.
- Odd address text? A correct pin with no readable street name is a separate issue — see "Address Unavailable" explained.
What about iPad, Apple Watch and iPod touch?
The same rule applies to every device signed in to your Apple Account. An iPad shows Use This iPad as My Location in the same Me tab, and an Apple Watch reports through the iPhone it is paired with rather than acting as a separate location device. If you regularly leave your iPhone behind but wear a cellular Apple Watch, your location can still update while you are out, because the watch feeds the pairing. A Wi-Fi-only iPad left on a desk, by contrast, will pin you to that desk indefinitely.
One more practical note: if you use several Macs, promoting one of them does not merge them. The others carry on reporting their own positions in the Devices tab; only the promoted one stands in for you as a person.
A word on honesty
Because switching devices moves your dot without warning anyone, it is sometimes suggested as a way to appear somewhere you are not. It works, technically — but if you are sharing your location with someone, it was presumably for a reason you both agreed on. If the arrangement no longer suits you, the straightforward option is to stop sharing, which is a single tap on the person's card, and say so.
In short
Open Find My on the device you want to represent you, go to the Me tab, and tap Use This Mac as My Location or Use This iPhone as My Location. Only one device can hold that role at a time, your other devices stay fully findable, and nobody is notified — they simply see your pin somewhere new. More Find My explainers are at findmyiphone.onl.