Do you have a tendency to lose your iPhone? I don’t mean like LOSE it, but more like the “leave it in the other room, or have it slide under the seat of your car or between the couch cushions” type of losing it. Well, if you have an Apple Watch, you can use its handy iPhone pinging function to play Marco Polo with your iPhone until you find it.
Ping Your iPhone with Your Apple Watch
You’ll want to make sure your iPhone and your Apple Watch are paired, because you can’t ping any iPhone except for the one the Apple Watch is paired with.
- Swipe up on the face of your Apple Watch. This will take you to the Control Panel. It will look like the screenshot above left.
- Tap the Ping button. (It looks like an iPhone with soundwaves coming out of it. I have a big red arrow pointing at it in the screenshot, so look for that. No, not the arrow, the icon it’s pointing to.)
- You’ll See the words “Pinging iPhone” appear at the top of your Watch screen, as shown in the screenshot above right.
- Start listening for a pinging noise. It sounds kind of like the SONAR and RADAR scopes do in old movies.
- Follow the sound of the pinging iPhone. Close your eyes, if you want to make a game out of it.
- Keep tapping the icon to make the iPhone ping. (The iPhone only pings for about 3 seconds or so.)
- Follow the sound until you find your iPhone. It was down in the couch cushions again, wasn’t it?
- For a little extra help in finding your iPhone, hold down on the Ping button instead of tapping it. The iPhone will then blink its built-in flash in addition to making noise. (This time, listen with your eyes open.)
Remember, this trick only works when the iPhone and the Apple Watch are connected, so they’ll have to be in close proximity of each other. But, if you work your way through the whole house and never hear a ping, you’ll probably want to place the iPhone in lost mode with Find My iPhone. (Or, use Find My iPhone to show you where you left it. It says it’s right outside your house? You left it in the car again, didn’t you?)
