Learn how to use the new Find My app on your Apple Watch running watchOS 27 to keep track of your devices, AirTags, and family members straight from your wrist.
Find My isn’t a new app, but it’s for Apple Watch. This is because, before watchOS 27, Apple Watch had three separate apps that did the job of a single Find My app. These apps were:
- Find People
- Find Devices, and
- Find Items
Apple had these three apps because cramming all the features into one on a device with a tiny screen would not have been very user-friendly.
But now that the watch screens are larger than before and people are used to smartwatches, Apple developers and software designers have finally worked their charm and assembled all three separate Find My features into a single app, bringing it in line with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Here’s a quick summary of how to get this new Find My app on your Apple Watch and how to use it.
Use the new Find My app on Apple Watch
Make sure Find My is enabled on your iPhone (Settings > Apple Account > Find My) and then follow these steps.
1) Update your Apple Watch to watchOS 27 (currently it’s in beta).
2) Open the new Find My app.
3) Tap the icon you see in the top left corner of the screen. It could be:
- Two-person icon – Find People
- MacBook and iPhone icon – Find Devices
- Four AirTags icon – Find Items
- Location icon – About your current location
4) Tap People to:
- See the location of your friends and family who are sharing their location with you.
- If you’re sharing your location with them, you can also use the new flexible location-sharing option to temporarily hide it without alerting them.
- Add location alerts to get notified when their location changes. Or notify them if your location changes.
- Stop sharing your location with the person altogether.
Note: Swipe up on the bottom bar to view them all as a list and select one. Then, tap the two-arrows icon to sort alphabetically or by distance.
5) Tap Devices to:
- See the location of your as well as your family member’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac (provided the family member is sharing their location with you). You can also get directions to it in Apple Maps.
- Play a sound on the device to locate it if it’s nearby.
- Activate Lost Mode.
- Get notifications when found or when left behind.
6) Tap Items to:
- Locate items attached to your AirTags or supported third-party trackers.
- If you have a newer Apple Watch, you can also use Precision Finding to pinpoint the location of your AirTags.
- Play an alert sound to find the item.
- Activate Lost Mode.
- Manage when found or left-behind alerts.
- See the tracker’s serial number and firmware.
7) The last option is called “Me,” which lets you disable or re-enable your location sharing and also decide whether you want to get friend requests for location sharing from others.
Given the smaller screen size, the Find My app on Apple Watch is not very convenient to use. But still, when your iPhone isn’t around, you can use it to do all the core things that you would do in the Find My app on a bigger screen.
Also, check out: How to use friend’s iPhone to find your lost Apple device