Is it possible to have a device linked to more than one iCloud account? This morning, my wife lost her phone on the beach while walking the dog. We’re not big iCloud users, and when I went to check https://www.icloud.com/find/ I found that it knew my current phone and laptop, and a number of long gone devices (but not my wife’s current phone). I have the account details for our daughter’s iCloud account, and logged in on my computer - which was allowed - and found yet more long gone devices listed, and also my wife’s current phone. it showed me roughly where the phone was. I then wanted to access this on my phone, to help me actually locate it; that turned out to require a verification code, sent to our daughter (who is now at university). Fortunately she was awake (!) and sent me the code. The phone has been found, everyone is happy.
But it occurred to me that it would be very helpful if the phone and laptops of all three of us (me, my wife, our daughter) could be listed on the ‘find my’ function of all three of us. Is this possible, or can a device only be attached to a single iCloud account?
If you log in on your Apple device at some point to another iCloud account it will be added as a trusted device and will get authentication codes, even if you log out and log back in to another (your) iCloud account. But perhaps the better way is to have each iCloud account add your mobile phone number as a trusted number, or add you as a recovery contact, so you can be used to authenticate connection.
FWIW the FindMy app and web site is designed not to require two factor authentication specifically for the reason so it can be used by another person to find their lost device, knowing that a lot of people don’t carry multiple trusted devices with them all of the time.
To sign in to iCloud.com/find, you don’t need to enter a verification code — so you can use Find Devices, even if your trusted device is lost or stolen.
If you’re asked to enter a verification code after signing in with your Apple ID and password, instead select the Find Devices button.
If that’s all you want, couldn’t you turn on Share My Location (on my iPhone, Settings > Apple ID > Find My > Share My Location)? I don’t recall how I set this up, but I believe it did not involve Family Sharing and it seems to work for letting two iPhones logged into two different iCloud accounts see each other’s location.
If someone would refresh my memory about how to add a person with whom I would like to share my location (on iOS and on macOS), I (and perhaps @benr and maybe others) would appreciate it.