Anxious AirPod owners, rejoice! Your greatest First World Problem has finally been solved with the release of iOS 10.3 Beta. The ‘Find My iPhone’ app will now be able to Find Your AirPods, as well! But with anything Apple related, there comes a catch.
While the ‘Find My iPhone’ app can pinpoint the location of your missing MacBook Pro, iPad, iPod, or iPhone to anywhere in the world, using the app to find your AirPods will be a bit more limited. Apple’s Location Services uses a combination of cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS to determine your device’s location, but unfortunately, the AirPods only support Bluetooth.
This means that in order to use the live tracking feature of the Find My iPhone app, your AirPods will have to be within range of another one of your Bluetooth enabled (iCloud signed-in) Apple devices. This is great if you misplaced your AirPods somewhere in your room, for example, and not so great if you lost them on the subway.
If you do try to track the location of your missing AirPods, and they are not in range of another device or their batteries are totally drained, the app will show you the last location and time that you had the headphones on you. If they are in range, however, you’ll be able to play an alarm from either one of the pods to help you find them, see below.
While not a perfect solution, this upcoming feature will surely entice potential buyers that would otherwise avoid this product, for fear of easily losing them. I know if I were an AirPods user, the ‘Find My iPhone’ app would be #1 on my iPhone’s Dock…
You can test out the iOS 10.3 Beta for yourself by become a member of Apple’s Beta Software Program, HERE.
