Find my Mac cannot be disabled

Question

Level 1

17 points

Find my Mac cannot be disabled

Sierra 10.12.1

I've just spent a day trying to disable Find My Mac feature.

My Mac is mostly at home, so it's presence in the list distracts me from searching other devices.

In Settings-iCloud I tried to remove just one FMM checkbox and also tried removing the whole iCloud account with no luck:

"Please try again later."

Moreover, when I tried to remove the whole iCloud account, my CPU raised to 100% by "com.preferences.icloud.remoteservice" process, until I clicked Cancel.

The final solution was pretty simple - my computer account had empty password. When I had set one, disabling FMM worked in a minute.

Just wondering if this forum is the place for bug report?)

MacBook Air, macOS Sierra (10.12.1), null

Posted on Dec 8, 2016 10:03 AM

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Answer 1

tombro70

Level 1

4 points

Dec 15, 2016 12:25 PM in response to Kappy

I have had that problem too and also have shared your frustration, so thanks for pointing me in the right direction Travinsky 🙂

Apparently it isn't a bug, nor has it ever been! Well all I can say is it may not be a bug as you were told in no uncertain terms, but it's certainly not particularly user friendly either, or even tells you why the **** thing won't disable. 😠

Unless you have a high knowledge of tech, or are an IT boffin it's not obvious what you're doing wrong.

Thanks again Travinsky and Kappy, I would have thought your answer might have been a little less critical as everyone may not have your level of knowledge on these matters and your comment was useless, especially to a non level 10 expert when they ask for help on these sites.

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Answer 2

Travinsky Author

Level 1

17 points

Jan 15, 2017 9:54 AM in response to tygb

Thanks, Captain Obvious!

Here in this thread we discuss why that exact checkbox may NOT work.

As you may read here and there, FindMyMac token is stored in NVRAM.

My overall guess is unchecking the checkbox executes some shell commands (like the ones in the links above), which require su access, which is known to fail with empty user password.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,017 points

Dec 8, 2016 10:14 AM in response to Travinsky

That is not now nor ever has been a bug.

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Answer 4

tygb

Level 9

65,010 points

Jan 15, 2017 9:24 AM in response to Travinsky

To disable find my Mac , click on system preferences > I cloud > uncheck the box of find my Mac an pop up appears enter your Apple ID password & click on continue .

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