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In iOS 15, Apple has added separation alerts to the Find My app, which let you know when you leave an AirTag or other Apple device behind. Separation alerts also support Find My-enabled third-party accessories. This article explains how you set them up.

FindMy-Feature.jpg

Called "Notify When Left Behind," the new Find My separation alerts let you know every time you are separated from your item at an unknown location, which can be helpful for items you take with you while traveling or visiting public locations.

The feature automatically sets your home as a Trusted Location (somewhere where you leave your items frequently and don't want to be notified every time), so you need to add your home address to your contact card in the Contacts app before enabling it.

The following steps run through the process of setting up separation alerts in the latest iOS 15 developer beta, a version of which will be available to the public next month.
  1. Launch the Find My app on your iPhone.
  2. Select the Devices or Items tab, and tap on the device that you want to set up the alerts for.
  3. Tap Notify When Left Behind.
    notify-when-left-behind-1a.jpg

    Toggle on the switch for Notify When Left Behind.
  4. Under "Notify Me, Except At," tap New Location to set a Trusted Location where you don't want to receive alerts.
  5. In the "Add Location" map screen, search or enter an address in the input field. You can define the radius of the ringed geofence for your trusted location by dragging the blue dot or using the Small, Medium, or Large options at the bottom. Tap Done when you're finished.
    If there are no more location exceptions you want to add, tap Done.
    notify-when-left-behind-2.jpg
Now the next time you leave your AirTag or other Apple device behind in a public place, you'll receive an alert informing you in good time, giving you a chance to retrieve it before you travel any further.

Of course, these alerts depend on you not leaving your iPhone behind (there's currently no equivalent separation alert available on Apple Watch for this scenario, sadly), so that's the device you won't want to forget, wherever it is you go.

Apple will make iOS 15 available for general release this fall.

Article Link: iOS 15: How to Get Notified If You Leave an AirTag or Apple Device Behind
 
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According to that screenshot even a small geofence is the size of several buildings?

So this wouldn’t work as a reminder that you left home without something until too late to quickly turn back?

So for smaller homes it would be better to NOT add the trusted location right?

What level of separation triggers the alert?
 
This is pretty cool but...

  • Like @Khedron says, the geofence is quite large. My notifications tend to kick in when I'm a good distance away.
  • Having this in reverse would be perfect for anti-theft. Rather than you've walked off without a device, how about 'your device has walked off without you'? That would be so useful.
I have an AirTag in the saddlebag of my bike and if the bike moved out of my radius that's when I'd like to know about it.
 
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This finally makes my AirTags useful day-to-day. I’m still surprised this wasn’t a feature at launch.
I was surprised too. It's annoying Apple isn't going to release this until iOS 15.

Whoops, left my pants at home again, but it is a "Trusted Location" so no one should notice ...

Leaving your pants at home has a slightly different meaning in the UK. I'm not sure people would notice if you did!
 
So I've got macOS Monterey installed which is so stable it's unreal.

Are people finding the same with iOS 15 Beta?
 
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Great feature, this was on Chipolo ap, dropped keys when dog walking and was alerted once out or range and managed to double back and find them.

Would be good if you could set smaller Distance as you don’t want to be too far once alerted.
 
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Can they please let us share an AirTag within our family at home? Specifically for our one set of keys to our crusty van? Those keys seem to have legs, and I added it to my wife's Find My, but sometimes I need it too.
 
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Reactions: siddavis
I want the Airtag to sound if I walk away from my very expensive iPhone.
Or is stolen, or falls out of my bag.

How hard can it be ?
 
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I want the Airtag to sound if I walk away from my very expensive iPhone.
Or is stolen, or falls out of my bag.

How hard can it be ?
I wouldn't be surprised if this opens the door to a general "separation of devices" type of app.
 
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On a similar note to being alerted on your Apple Watch if you've left your iPhone behind, I've always found it strange that you can log into your Mac when wearing your Apple Watch, but it doesn't lock the Mac when you walk away.
 
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Am I being stupid or slow minded? Why is it a choice that if I leave my phone at home it's OK, don't notify me?
It reads 'notify me except at home' and gives my address
You go out jogging. You take your Apple Watch and intentionally leave your iPhone at home. The watch spends the entire time yelling at you that you left your phone at home.
 
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Read more closely:

You go out jogging. You take your Apple Watch and intentionally leave your iPhone at home. The watch spends the entire time yelling at you that you left your phone at home.​

Some people like to not have the weight/bulk of the iPhone on them when they’re running, and purposefully take only the watch - it does all the fitness tracking, and staying in touch. OP wondered why that setting was there. This is why. Changing the scenario to defeat what the user wanted, in order to keep the phone happy, isn’t improving anything.
I really hope Apple puts more tweaks into the Left Behind feature so we can customize for each tag.
 
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I forgot my Apple Watch at the house today, something I normally notice before I get very far. Today I was too far away to go back. It's really stupid that this feature doesn't work for when you leave the watch behind. I get that a lot of people have multiple watches and intentionally leave their Apple Watch at home sometimes, but not everyone has to enable this feature.

I'm a software developer, so I just implemented my own system that will check to see if my watch is still in the bedroom when my car backs out of the garage. It should trigger once I am 10ft out of the garage. If my wife takes my car while my watch is in the bedroom, I will get a notification, but that will not happen often.

If anyone is curious how I implemented this. I have ESP32's in every room in my house which detect the presence of BLE devices. The Apple Watch sends a BLE beacon every 5 seconds which the ESP32 sees. My car has an OBD2 scanner that has BLE and just happens to send a beacon every second. Here is the firmware I use on the ESP32 to make this happen:

You can get 5 ESP32's for about $15 on Amazon. I have one in every room, including the garage. It's opened up all kinds of possibilities for home automation. It's shocking that Apple hasn't implemented more room presence related stuff in HomeKit.
 
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Might be off-topic but does anyone else find the Find My app icon ugly? I just can’t accept the design so I hide it deep inside folders😂
 
I'd like to have the option to have set time parameters to the location. This would stop an alert when I leave the office to get lunch, but would alert me if I left the office later in the day to go home. Getting an alert and ignoring is not a deal breaker though.
 
I imagine you will repost this when IOS 15 actually comes out in a few months. Will look forward to reading it then.
 
Yawn… Tile had this at least three years ago. Great feature though. Too bad Apple couldn’t have done this in the first place.
 
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