Take Control of Find My and AirTags, 5th edition

Track your stuff, find your friends, and safely share your location
Version 5.0, updated September 4, 2026

This book takes you inside Apple’s Find My ecosystem, a privacy-protecting way to track your things, share your location, and aid in recovery lost and stolen devices. Find My lets you and someone else arrange to meet and see your live, updated ETA; figure out where you left your iPad (was it on a flight?!), and know that your bicycle remains firmly in place where you locked it. But also has robust features designed to block or deter unwanted tracking by people you know and people you don’t.

Apple has matured Find My into a robust ecosystem that encompasses people, hardware, and compact trackers. Along the way, Find My has baked in increasing amounts of privacy protection to ensure that this level of real-time tracking isn’t used for stalking or other crimes. Take Control of Find My and AirTags takes you through the many parts of the Find My world so you can configure and refine how you and your stuff is tracked and shared.

You can use native Find My apps on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch, or (to a limited extent) at iCloud.com, to track any of those devices or the people carrying them, as well as to see where AirTags and third-party Find My network items are, such as a tag in your car on in a backpack. You can even securely and temporarily given an airline tracking info for an AirTag in your location so you know when it arrives with you at a destination—or help them find it when it’s gone astray.

This book looks at the three different kinds of tracking available from Apple:

• People: hare your location safely, follow others who let you, and send and receive notifications about arrivals and departures. Learn about the features and options to deter and block unwanted tracking.
• Devices: See the whereabouts of your and Family Sharing group members’ devices and audio hardware. Get to know the ins and outs of enabling Find My and taking remote actions, from playing a sound to wiping your data from a device.
• Items: Find out how AirTags make use of the crowdsourced network of other people’s Apple devices to help you find a lost or forgotten purse, backpack, or even car, and about the many third-party devices licensing the technology from Apple. Learn how to share your items with up to five other people.

The book focuses on iOS 26/27, iPadOS 26/27, macOS 26 Tahoe/27 Golden Gate, and watchOS 26/27. However, it includes details on using Find My features for devices going back to IOS 17/iPadOS 17 and macOS 14 Sonoma to best support your or your family’s mix of different vintages of hardware.

Get an overview of how Find My works:

• Turn on tracking on every device: iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.
• Find out the difference between device-based Find My tracking and the Find My network.
• Figure out whether your Apple or Beats audio hardware can be tracked just over Bluetooth nearby or also via the Find My Network.
• See the place in Apple’s ecosystem for third-party Find My tracking from nearly a dozen companies that make bike, bag, and general stuff trackers, some with extra alarms.
• Understand Activation Lock, which protects devices from being reused even if someone has erased them, and Find My Lock, which keeps Find My items from being reset and taken over.
• Discover buried controls for configuring exactly how Find My updates your device’s location, including when power runs low.
• Develop an understanding of your Apple Watch’s three distinct Find My features to use them effectively on the go.

Learn about sharing your location and that of your devices and items:

• Get to know presence, the way you define which of your devices indicates where you are to other people.
• Share your location via Messages or Find My for an hour, a day, indefinitely, or a custom duration.
• Start sharing AirTags and other items with up to five other people.
• Learn how to share an AirTag or other Find My item with an airline to help them locate your baggage.

Get help finding missing items and devices:

• Lost a single earbud? Apple may have you covered by playing a sound out of it or providing nearly pinpoint tracking.
• Experience the joy of playing a sound over the internet or nearby to help find a missing device or item.
• Learn about the capability to track an iPhone or iPad even after it’s been erased!
• Help family members find lost and stolen gear through Find My’s Family Sharing support.
• Understand how to use Precision Tracking when you’re close to a missing object.

Be alerted to and block unwanted tracking:

• Learn about Apple’s efforts and those of the broader industry to prevent Find My from being used for stalking and unwanted tracking.
• Spot Google and Apple trackers near you or traveling with you that aren’t yours and aren’t Apple Find My items shared by others with you, including audio alerts and warnings on your iPhone, iPad, or an Android device.
• Control and monitor the way you let others track your whereabouts, including pausing your shared location without notifying someone.