Lock down your iPhone in 15 minutes

What you’ll be able to do afterward

• Your phone will require your face or a strong passcode for every sensitive change.
• A thief with your phone in hand can’t read your notifications or disable Find My.
• Apps lose the tracking access they never needed.
• If the phone disappears, you can locate, lock, or erase it from any browser.

The plays

1. Set a six-digit (or better) passcode Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Change Passcode → Passcode Options

   What this just did: made the passcode — the key to everything else on this list — worth guessing at most ten times.

2. Turn on Stolen Device Protection Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Stolen Device Protection → Turn On Protection

   What this just did: critical changes (like disabling Find My or changing your Apple account password) now require Face ID plus a delay when you're away from familiar locations — a stolen passcode alone is no longer enough.

3. Hide notification previews on the lock screen Settings → Notifications → Show Previews → When Unlocked

   What this just did: your messages, codes, and reminders no longer display to whoever is holding the phone.

4. Shorten auto-lock Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → 1 minute

   What this just did: a phone left on a table locks itself before it wanders off unlocked.

5. Turn off access to controls while locked Settings → Face ID & Passcode → scroll to "Allow Access When Locked" → turn off Control Center and USB Accessories

   What this just did: a locked phone can no longer be put in airplane mode (which hides it from Find My) or plugged into cracking hardware.

6. Make sure Find My is fully on Settings → [your name] → Find My → Find My iPhone → all three switches on

   What this just did: a lost phone is findable, lockable, and erasable from icloud.com/find — even when it's offline or powered off.

7. Turn off app tracking requests Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking → Allow Apps to Request to Track → off

   What this just did: apps can no longer even ask to track you across other companies' apps and websites. That flashlight app is out of the ad business.

8. Audit the big three permissions Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services / Microphone / Camera — for each, downgrade anything that doesn't obviously need it

   What this just did: cut standing access to your location, mic, and camera down to the apps with a real reason. When in doubt: "While Using" beats "Always," and "Never" beats both.

You’re now covered against…

• A stolen or lost phone — locked fast, protected against passcode-thieves, findable and erasable from anywhere.
• Shoulder-surfers and snoops — nothing sensitive on the lock screen, no controls accessible while locked.
• The easy tracking — cross-app tracking requests silenced and permissions cut back to the apps that earn them.

Fifteen minutes. No apps installed, nothing to pay for, nothing that breaks tomorrow. That’s a warm-up.

Progress is saved only on this device. It never leaves your phone.