Regardless of how you feel about Apple’s wireless AirPods, it’s difficult to deny that they’re easy to misplace, especially if you don’t always put them back in their dental floss-like case. With the release of the first developer build of iOS 10.3 and the update’s eventual consumer release, Apple plans to help mitigate that issue to an extent.
‘Find My AirPods’ is integrated into Apple’s ‘Find My iPhone’ app, allowing users with a device within range of paired AirPods to locate the wireless headphones. If your AirPods are out of range or are dead, the app will tell you the last location the AirPods’ signal could still be tracked.
Find My AirPods finds the last place AirPods were connected to a device and reports the time and location. If your device is able to connect to the AirPods while you’re using the app to look for them, the headphone’s will report their currently location and emit a sound to help you hone in on where they are.
While a positive move for AirPods owners, it’s unsurprising Apple released its own tool for finding misplaced AirPods, as the company removed a third-party app from the App Store late last week that functioned in much the same way. The app, however, approached finding AirPods a little differently, utilizing each earpiece’s Bluetooth signal to indicate their distance from the user’s smartphone.
The feature is currently available in the developer beta 1 version of iOS 10.3.
