The best hidden features of Apple Find My

Apple Find My is a useful tool with the iPhone, making it easy to locate where someone is, as well as track items attached to Apple AirTags. Thanks to the Find My network, you see exactly where an item is in the house or if you left it somewhere else. Good Samaritans can also use their devices and the network to help you find a lost item. I use Find My daily to know my son’s location when he walks home from school or goes out with friends. I can also track my keys and other items using the attached AirTags. When my son misplaced his phone, I was able to access my device to confirm with him that it was still somewhere in the school and even identify which end of the building it was. (It was at the gym!)

You can do a lot more with Apple Find My, like ping devices like AirPods or AirTags to play a sound to help you find them. With Precision Find, you can be guided directly to an object or person, like a lost child in a store or your phone somewhere in the house. Beyond these lesser-known features, there are even more Find My features that you may not be aware of, but would probably use if you were. From tracking other devices with the built-in Find My network to being able to temporarily pause sharing your location with the latest update, Find My is more useful than you think.

Besides Apple AirTags, including the original AirTags as well as the latest improved version, did you know that some devices have Find My functionality? It gives you the same functionality as an AirTag without actually needing this separate accessory. There are a large and growing number of them. For example, I use a Satechi passport holder, a Moft Wallet that attaches magnetically to the back of my phone (which I can track if it falls or I forget it somewhere), and the Powerbeats Fit headphones from Beats, which is owned by Apple.

The Find My network accessories program opened in April 2021, and since then many devices have been connecting to it. Tons of third-party gadgets work with Apple’s Find My network, including products from Belkin, Chipolo, and even Segway, as well as VanMoof bikes, headphones and mobile accessories from other brands, and much more. It’s simple to add the item by searching for the device in the Find My app once you’ve loaded and set it up. Log in once it’s recognized, name it accordingly and you’re good to go.

One of the newest features in iOS 27 is the ability to temporarily hide your location in Find My. The reason could be that your partner doesn’t know you’re at the jewelry store to receive their birthday present or the kids can’t see that you’re picking up party favors for what is supposed to be a surprise birthday party. Maybe you’re coming into town to surprise your parents and you don’t want them to know you’re coming. With this feature, you can pause your location for a custom amount of time to do what you need to do, and the person with the ability to track you won’t know that you did it. Instead, they’ll just see “no locations found” if they try to find you.

Likewise, Apple has also expanded the options to share your location with someone for a short period of time. Now you can select the number of days, hours and minutes via rolling dials. This can last a week while you’re traveling to keep tabs on everyone’s location. It could also be at a work event so colleagues can converge as needed, or for a few hours while you take a group of kids to an amusement park.

Let’s say Find My is set up to track your elderly parents and your tweens or teens. In addition to being able to actively see their location 24/7, you can also set up location alerts. These will notify you whenever the person arrives at a specific location, leaves a specific location, or is not at a specific location. This could be to track a child’s arrival and departure from school or to notify you each time your elderly parent has left home and when they have safely returned.

You can set it based on the person’s current location, your current location (like your home), or add any other specific location, like the address of a school, workplace, or nursing home. You can configure this to happen just once or every time the person arrives or leaves the set location. This is a great way to build trust with a teenager while giving them the autonomy to go out on their own. It can also give you peace of mind if you have elderly parents or grandparents who still live alone and you want to keep tabs on their whereabouts.

You know you can ping your iPhone from another Apple device, like your Apple Watch or MacBook, to play a tone and find it nearby. But you can also adjust settings to alert you if you leave your phone or something else behind. Select the item in question in the app and under Notify me, enable “When left behind.” For example, if you leave your house keys at a local coffee shop or your laptop bag in the car, you’ll receive a notification before you go too far away so you can run back and retrieve the item. You can define an exceptional location, very logically your own home.

This comes in handy for easily forgotten items like keys, so you don’t leave them on your desk at the office. This feature worked wonders for me a few years ago when, in a hurry at a Japanese airport for a connecting flight, I left my passport in the aforementioned Satechi pouch at the check-in counter. I was informed shortly after I left that I had done so. Luckily, the wonderful airline employee ran after me to hand it to me. But if she hadn’t, I could have gone back and got him because I got the warning before I went too far. This feature and others confirm that Find My can do much more than just track the basic location of your Apple devices and AirTags.