Apple's AirPods are wire-free, which makes them convenient to use, but it's also caused some concern from users who are afraid to lose their $159 earphones. In its latest beta, Apple has introduced a new feature to assuage customer fears - Find My AirPods.
Available in iOS 10.3, Find My AirPods adds your AirPods to the "Find My iPhone" app, listing them alongside all other Apple products. In the app, you can tap on the AirPods to cause them to play a little chirping sound that gradually gets louder for location purposes.
After activating the sound, you can choose to have it play solely through the left AirPod or through the right AirPod so you don't need to listen to chirping if only one of the AirPods is missing.
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The location of the AirPods is displayed on the iPhone's screen. The AirPods rely on the iPhone's GPS to display a location (or another iOS device) and will offer up the last known place where the AirPods were connected should the AirPods be misplaced.
Find My AirPods isn't a perfect solution because the AirPods have no built in cellular connectivity of their own, but with the ability to see the last known location, AirPods owners can at least go to that spot to attempt to reconnect, and the included sound capabilities help narrow down a location.
Find My AirPods is activated automatically when iOS 10.3 is installed. AirPods show up in the menu as soon as they're connected to an iOS device. iOS 10.3 is currently limited to developers, but a public beta should be available in the near future.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)this has undoubtedly been in the works long before the find my airpods app was put on and subsequently removed from the app store
This was in the UK news a few weeks ago that that app got canned, and people were saying "oh, Apple wants me to loose them so they can make more money out of me when I have to buy new ones" - and a lot of similar nonsense. I said then that aside from the conspiracy theories its probably more likely that the app approvers didn't know Apple was planning to make it a feature anyway and managment ordered its removal. - People then got upset that I wasn't bashing Apple enough!