“Find My” Apps to Help Find Lost Things

Here are all the things the Find My app can do.

Locate Your Devices

Just like death and taxes, it is inevitable that you will misplace your Apple device at some point. You might leave your iPhone at the restaurant, one of your AirPods could drop out during your morning walk, or you’ll leave the coffee shop with a latte, blueberry muffin, but not the iPad you were using to catch up on the news.

With the Find My app, you can get the exact location of the missing device. If it’s at home, you can have it play a sound. If it’s irretrievably lost, you can mark it as such and erase your sensitive information. By turning on the Find My settings on each of your devices, you will be able to protect your data remotely.

You can even find devices that aren’t connected to Wi-Fi or a cellular network. As long as they have power, the devices will emit a secure Bluetooth signal. Other Apple devices with iOS 13, iPadOS, or macOS Catalina or later can help “crowdsource” their locations. You must ensure that this feature is active.

On Mac:

• Go to System Preferences
• Click your Apple ID
• Click iCloud > Find My
• Click Options

Make sure that Find My Mac is on. Click ‘Turn On’ if it’s not.

On an iPhone or iPad:

• Go to Settings
• Tap your name at the top of the screen
• Tap Find My > Find My device
• Toggle Find My Network.

Make sure that Send Last Location is on, and your device will continue to send its location until it runs out of power.

How to Remember Where You Have Put Something

Finding Your Friends

There are Find My apps to help find lost things – like people! The People tab of the app allows you to locate anyone who has shared their location with you. This feature can come in handy when you want to keep tabs on your visiting grandkids, for example. It works well if you’re going to meet a friend for shopping and want to make it easier to find them in a crowded mall. All friends willing to share their location will show up in the app, and you can set up notifications that let you know when they arrive at or leave a designated spot.

The app provides directions to your friends. And you can view their contact card and change the name of their location. The Apple Watch also has a Find People app to help you locate your friends. The settings are in the app, but the watch automatically receives the settings and list of friends that you’ve set up on other devices.

How to Share Your Location

To find a friend, one of you has to share, and the other must accept. You can do it in one of two ways. You can use the Friends tab by tapping Share My Location and typing in the name of the person with whom you want to share your location.

You can also do it from the Me tab of the Find My app on iOS or iPadOS. There you can toggle your location sharing on or off, allow friends to ask to share your location, receive location updates, and edit your location name.

A newer option is Item Safety Alerts. Turn this on, and you’ll get alerts if someone else’s AirTag or other third-party device is with you for a specific period.

Finding Items

On top of apps to help find lost things, as mentioned – there are also devices. You can track things like keys and baggage with the new AirTags. You can track AirTags just like any Apple device. Click or tap an AirTag in the Find My app, and you’ll immediately see its location. You can get directions to it, receive notifications when it’s found, or put it in lost mode. You can add a message in the lost mode that will display if someone finds the AirTag and holds it near their phone. By including your phone number, the person who finds the AirTag can get in touch with you.