My AirPods keep telling me they’re lost … through my AirPods

July 9, 2023

2 min read

AirPods are gaining conversation awareness soon, but there’s another kind of awareness that AirPods have been lacking lately: when they’re in your ears and not lost.

Find My AirPods

Apple has this great feature called Find My that lets you relocate your AirPods when they’re lost or left behind.

It recently saved my bacon when a single AirPod Pro jumped out of my case and onto the pavement. I was driving home from lunch when the Find My alert notified me on CarPlay.

False positives are common enough that I usually ignore these, but it was spot on this time. I turned the car around and searched the restaurant parking lot in the rain for the lost pod.

False positives are still common with Find My alerts and AirPods. I check every time now, but they’re still in their case in my pocket.

There’s a new level of false positives that has occurred more recently. Several times a week, Siri will tell me that my AirPods are no longer with me through the AirPods it claims are lost.

Admittedly, this is slightly less annoying than when they’re in your bag. At least you don’t need to actually check. Still, it’s enough to make me crack a smile every time. I, for one, look forward to Vision Pro lost alerts appearing on Vision Pro while you wear it.

Temporary fix

You can turn off Find My alerts to prevent it from happening, or just turn off Announce Notifications if it’s too annoying.

As absurd as AirPods telling you they’re lost in your ears sounds, I still prefer to get the feature turned on in case one or both pods end up in a parking lot without me again.

The issue is hardly isolated either. We’re hearing it across different versions of iOS, and other AirPods users have reported the same experience. Hopefully that means AirPods becoming sentient but dumb is also on Apple’s radar and will be resolved soon.