How Do I Remove a Device from Apple’s “Find My” Service?

You’re smart to be asking this question because you’re right that Apple really does try to prevent theft by utilizing the Find My service to prevent disconnect and re-pairing without authorization. This is even more helpful with Apple smartphones, tablets, and computers, but even the humble AirPods Pro are trackable with Find My and therefore need to be disconnected before changing owners.

In your case, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if your sister had to ask you to track their location if she lost them. Yes, she can reset and then re-pair them with a new phone with a long-press of the power button on the back [see: How to Reset Your AirPods] but, as Apple warns: “AirPods can be associated with one Apple ID. If you want to use AirPods or AirPods Pro that someone else has used, they first need to remove the AirPods from their Apple ID.”

The long and short of it is that it’s up to the original owner to disconnect before the new owner can treat them as if they were new, out-of-box. So let’s see how that’s done!

FINDING YOUR AIRPODS PRO IN FIND MY

The easiest path to accomplish this task is to launch the Find My application on a Mac system where you’ve logged into the same Apple ID as the AirPods Pro. When I log in, you can see that I have quite a few devices I track:

Normally the map would show the location – my home, in this instance – but for privacy reasons I’ve moved the map image to protect my privacy. I track my MacBook Pro, my iPhone 15 Pro, my Mac Mini (though I’m unsure why given it’s a stationary file server in my office), my AirPods Pro, and my iPad Mini. They’re mostly all with me at any given moment, but if I lost track of one, I could click and find it on the map.

WORKING WITH THE DEVICE REMOTELY

While different devices have different remote capabilities, AirPods Pro can actually play sounds to help you find them if they’re fallen behind a couch cushion or been swept behind your desk or similar. Control-click on the device in question to pull up the context menu:

“Play Sound” helps you find them if you’re close, “Directions…” will give you directions from your current location to where they were last located, “Mark As Lost…” is helpful if they were stolen; it can lock them down and make them completely unusable (until you hopefully recover them). The last option is what we want, however: “Remove This Device…“. Choose that.

These warnings are important to read! Here’s what they say:

• Remove from Apple ID: These AirPods are linked to your Apple ID. Removing them will allow another person to configure Find My network.
• Unpair from Bluetooth Devices: This will remove these AirPods from your list of connected Bluetooth devices. You will have to pair these AirPods again in order to play audio.

The second one might be a bit of a surprise to most people: When you “Remove” your AirPods from your Apple ID, they will automatically vanish from the Bluetooth known device list on every Apple Device you use. Handy, actually, but surprisingly nonetheless.

REMOVE YOUR AIRPODS FROM YOUR APPLE ID

Now that we’re at this spot in the Find My app, let’s proceed. Click on “Remove“. You’ll go through a few more warnings, starting with:

That makes sense. Proceed by clicking on “Remove” again…

This step took a while for me, almost two minutes. Lots of work on the backend, I presume. Finally, and again, rather surprisingly, I got this warning:

Honestly, since it was apparently already removed at this point, this dialog seems a bit out of order. Either way, a click on “Remove” (one more time!) and it was done! My list of devices no longer included the AirPods Pro:

A few steps, but not a particularly onerous task. Your sister will thank you when she can open them up adjacent to her iPhone and both pair them and add them to her Apple ID with just a tap or two!

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing tutorials for the Apple iPhone and the Mac since they were first released. Please check out my extensive iPhone help area and Mac help area for oodles of useful content.