Does it do that if you have the cellular watch. Haven’t left without a phone in a while.
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"You're leaving your item behind" Warning Feature
- Thread starter Rigby
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I had tried an early bluetooth tracker a few years ago, and it had a "left behind" whistle (on the tracker itself)... it ended up being annoying when it wasn't necessary and didn't work when it should have. I turned the feature off. I wouldn't be surprised to find out Apple already developed such a feature, but found it couldn't work in a positive, secure, and reliable way for the customer, so left it out for now.
Perhaps one approach would be the opposite of the anti-stalking feature... notice one of your own tags followed you from home, but then stopped following you at some point. That would be a pretty good indicator that you left behind something important along your journey. Notification "It looks like you may have left your Wallet behind. Tap for last place seen / Dismiss..."
As to reminding you about leaving things at home, that would probably have to come down to what's typical in your patterns, but those can change suddenly, such as leaving for a flight rather than a trip to the grocery store. I use a reminders list called "Packing" that I put items on I don't want to forget before travel. Critical items get geofenced for departing home, so if I haven't checked it off and I leave, up pops a notification.
Given you can already add geofenced reminders and even tell Find My to notify me of someone arriving or departing (with their permission), it wouldn't be such a stretch to add similar capabilities to AirTags... oh, and then there are suddenly more privacy concerns. If I could get an alert the moment an AirTag departed from or arrived at geofenced area or near me, then I could slip that into someone's pocket unbeknownst. A stalker could get an alert the moment a victim left the bar they are at, etc.
Tough design choices, for sure.
Perhaps one approach would be the opposite of the anti-stalking feature... notice one of your own tags followed you from home, but then stopped following you at some point. That would be a pretty good indicator that you left behind something important along your journey. Notification "It looks like you may have left your Wallet behind. Tap for last place seen / Dismiss..."
As to reminding you about leaving things at home, that would probably have to come down to what's typical in your patterns, but those can change suddenly, such as leaving for a flight rather than a trip to the grocery store. I use a reminders list called "Packing" that I put items on I don't want to forget before travel. Critical items get geofenced for departing home, so if I haven't checked it off and I leave, up pops a notification.
Given you can already add geofenced reminders and even tell Find My to notify me of someone arriving or departing (with their permission), it wouldn't be such a stretch to add similar capabilities to AirTags... oh, and then there are suddenly more privacy concerns. If I could get an alert the moment an AirTag departed from or arrived at geofenced area or near me, then I could slip that into someone's pocket unbeknownst. A stalker could get an alert the moment a victim left the bar they are at, etc.
Tough design choices, for sure.
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No it doesn’t and I was just about to mention this. You’d have to swipe up to see the control center and if it’s connected to cellular. The watch obviously knows when the phone was disconnected from Bluetooth. Shouldn’t be difficult to accompany that with text and a ding (notification) but Apple for some reason doesn’t want to add this and it’s maddening lol. C’mon, at least throw us an option to do this with Shortcuts.
Your phone knows exactly where the AirTag is. Why not give end users this ability and allow them to set the length limit by item. If I’m 500 feet away from something warn me, if I’m a half mile away from something warn me, one mile away, etc.
It would be a great feature. I never want to be more than a certain number of feet away from my keys, wallet, etc. Let the end user decide on an item by item basis and allow for zones. For instance if I’m at my home I’m cool with being 500 - 1000 feet away from my wallet and keys but if I’m out and about they should never be more than a few feet away. I keep them in my pocket.
That would be a very powerful and very useful feature. I don’t know what that would do to the battery life of an AirTag or an iPhone / iPad but it’s a feature that would be useful and if Tile can do it Apple should be able to pull some form of it off as well.
Not only that, but even if it did still do the disconnect on the Home Screen, it's not like you're getting a notification tap or any indication that this has taken place.
If you left it in a bar or restaurant (despite activation lock), chances are it's long gone when you go back an hour or two later.
That's a silent notification - doesn't help you unless you happen to notice it - which could be hours later or never.
The Phone Buddy app does work great for this though if you’re interested. Been using it for a few years and lots of new features and improvements have been added over time.
Thanks, that was mentioned earlier in the thread: #8
I may just have to take it for a spin to see how well it works.
I been beta testing it since practically the beginning. I don’t like mentioning that in fear of sounding biased but I can say it’s developed a lot over the past few years and it works as advertised. The developer is very responsive too.Thanks, that was mentioned earlier in the thread: #8
I may just have to take it for a spin to see how well it works.
No, it doesn't, not at all.
At best it knows where the tag was last was when it lost contact, or where another phone has reported it to be since then.
Once it's lost bt contact, it cannot possibly narrow it down to "now 100ft away, now 500ft away etc.
a warning when it loses contact is feasible but that needs geotagging and IME with a similar product gives many false alarms because signal strength isn't constant it can be altered by numerous things like changing the orientation of a phone, you moving a few feet's so your body is blocking the signal, and so on.
I am currently away from home and it's reporting an item I left there as being across the road ina neighbours house. I suspect this is because the item is near my front window and passing cars or indeed the neighbours iPhone have had fleeting contact with it. It certainly has not decided phone is at position x (neighbours) distance to item is y, therefire location is z (still my house). Instead it's reported location as at position x, neighbours.
next time I'll go away I'll leave it at the back of my house. Or havea stern word with my neighbour if they actually have stolen my item of course.
Update: since I posted this a few minutes ago, those items now moved to a different house across the street LOL. So either all my neighbours are passing the item around or another neighbour across the street came out and their iPHone picked up the signal.
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Yes Phone Buddy is great. I have wandered off without my phone a number of times and it alerts me just a few steps away and has lots of options for disabling it when on wifi, etc.
As far as AirTags it would be the phone alerting you when you get way from where it thinks the AirTag is. When AirTags are stationary they only check in infrequently but when they sense they are moving they update. Having the phone checking on its relative position to the geofenced AirTag shouldn't adversely affect the AirTag's battery life at all.
Well, as many others have stated, Apple needs to update the Find My app on the Watch to be full featured, so we can track all of our other Apple devices with the Watch. Hopefully that's soon!
No need for snark. I don't think anyone's saying "Please let me have this feature so I can shut my brain down!" Using your logic, no one would need reminders, seatbelt warnings, collision mitigation systems in vehicles, low fuel warnings, etc. Obviously these things are meant as fail-safes and are perfectly reasonable features to want. Yes, it's good to form habits to prevent these things from being an issue constantly, but all it takes is ONE time for something to go wrong and you'll be very thankful for the fail-safe!
I need to get more into shortcuts. I feel like there's a lot of potential. Could you just sort of code your own shortcut?
I’m not really savvy in coding so I can’t say for certain if there’s a way to tap into iOS or the Shortcuts app but Apple seemingly adds new automation trigger options with every update. There’s one to “show notification” when something happens. The only option I see for Bluetooth is when a device connects (nothing for disconnects. The Apple Watch isn’t even listed in the Bluetooth device list but my AirPods, cars and motorcycle helmet headset are. Almost like it’s done on purpose lol. Would be nice to create an automation to “show notification” when the Apple Watch “disconnects from Bluetooth.”
There's likely been hundreds (thousands?) of requests for this of Apple since the Watch first came out. They know people want it. I sometimes wonder if their tipping point is when they see enough app downloads for someone that's done it (like the phone buddy app) - they decide there's enough demand at that point, bake it into iOS and clobber the developer.
And, yes, I know Apple gets massive margin on their apps. We've seen them do this in the past though...and now they're painting Tile into a corner.
Hmm, its seems like for the scripting shortcuts there would need to be inputs available from the FindMy app or something like that. Guess you could set a shortcut for when your door opens to remind you to check for your keys, but that doesn't really help when you're out.