How to use the Find My feature for AirPods Pro and AirPods Max
Never stress over a lost earbud ever again
Credit:
Reviewed.com / Jackson Ruckar
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It's never easy losing a good pair of headphones. You either spend hours tearing apart your home trying to hunt them down, venture out into the world to retrace your steps, or bite the bullet and drop a wad of cash on a replacement. Fortunately, Apple's rolled out out an update to AirPods Pro and AirPods Max firmware that allows you to track down your set in the Find My app with notifications for when you've left your AirPods behind, as well as found notifications if someone stumbles across them, so you won't have to bite into your budget for a new pair. For non-Pro or Max AirPods, you're limited to being able to see the location of your AirPods on a map in the Find My app.
Apple's handy location-tracking app makes it easy to keep an eye on all your Apple devices, including MacBooks, iPads, Watches, AirTags, and now AirPods (Pro, and Max). You can even keep an eye on your friends, if you both consent, for a little extra safety precaution. Most of your devices should populate there automatically unless you've disabled Find My. Once they've been added, you'll be able to pinpoint their last-known location on a map, get visual directions to the device's location, and if you have AIrPod Pro or Max you can play a sound to ping them or mark them as lost.
There's no way to manually update your AirPods to the latest firmware, but it should have been automatically installed by now, and once it's there your AirPods should automatically appear inside the Find My app. The options are a bit more limited—you can only play a sound (on Pro and Max models) or get directions—but the tracking still works. In our quick testing, the sound played after roughly 20 seconds on one set of AirPods Pro—the feature isn't available for regular AirPods (including third-generation), unfortunately.
If your AirPods aren't showing up within the app, you can try resetting them and then re-pairing them with your phone first. After that, they should populate within the Find My App, and you'll be able to rest a little easier knowing that even if your AirPods are out of sight, they may not be totally lost.
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