How to get an Alert When you Leave your iPhone, iPad, Mac or AirPods Behind
Reading Time: 3 minutes 
In iOS and iPadOS 15, you can turn on separation alerts for your devices. So if you leave your iDevice, Mac or AirPods somewhere, you can receive an alert on one of your other devices letting you know you left it behind. You can also set Trusted Locations which will allow you to leave your iPad, say, at your house without getting an alert. The separation alerts are available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and AirPods.
What you Need
Separation alerts work by having one of your devices share its (your) location. It is this device that will alert you; The alert will be triggered when one of your other devices is separated from the device sharing your location. In order to set up separation alerts, you will need one of the following devices that can share your location:
- iPhone, or iPod touch running iOS 15 or later.
- iPad running iPadOS 15 or later.
Separation alerts can be set for:
- iPhone, or iPod touch running iOS 15 or later.
- iPad running iPadOS 15 or later.
- Mac with Apple silicon running macOS Monterey or later.
- AirPods with Find My turned on – available for AirPods (3rd gen), AirPods Pro and AirPods Max.
How to Set Up an Alert
You can share your location from an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. If you want to change the device you are using to share your location, open Find My on the device you want to use to share your location, tap on Me. Swipe up to see all of the options. Tap on Use This (iPad) as My Location; This is the device that will alert you about your (other) device you left behind.
- Open the Find My app on your device.
- Select the Devices tab at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap on the device you want to set an alert for. Scroll to see the Notifications box.
- Tap on Notify When Left Behind. After updating to iOS 15 / watchOS 8, this had already been enabled for me.
- You may see your Home address already added to the Trusted Locations. You can add new locations under the Notify Me, Except At.
- Tap on New Location. Enter the location in the search field. You can choose your location radius as small, medium or large to cover more or less area for your Trusted Location. Tap Done to save. Tap Done to exit.
Related Articles
