Apple's impressive Find My network is able to help you find your lost Apple devices with greater ease than ever before. In fact, it can help reunite you with any of your belongings if you attach an AirTag to them.
But what exactly is the Find My network and why is it so exciting? That's what we're going to take a look at.
What Is Apple's Find My Network?
Apple's Find My network is a peer-to-peer network consisting of every Apple device that has the Find My feature turned on. In the spring of 2021, Apple claimed that this is close to a billion different devices.
Each of these devices can connect to another Apple device, an AirTag, or another third-party Bluetooth tracker when it comes near to it, and relay information about its location back to Apple.
How the Find My Network Works
Devices on the Find My network can detect Bluetooth signals from other compatible Apple devices whenever they're within Bluetooth range (roughly 15 meters). Apple then relays these signals through its system, to send the missing device's location to its owner.
As well as Bluetooth, the U1 chip in some Apple devices allows for precise location data collecting. Using ultra-wideband radio waves, this chip can work out a device's location by measuring the time it takes for that radio wave to pass between the device and other nearby Apple devices.
Since there might be multiple Find My activated devices in an area, a lost Apple device can ping off multiple devices. This will help to produce a more accurate location and can be especially useful when it's on the move.
The location and Bluetooth signals get securely relayed through Apple devices in the background.
Privacy on the Find My Network
Now that you've heard your Apple device connects to random people's devices, or that your iPhone pings your location to AirTag owners, you might be a little worried about the privacy aspects. There's no need to worry.
The device identifiers involved in Bluetooth connections from an Apple device change regularly to stop anyone from monitoring and potentially intercepting the signal. Nobody can track your devices using these identifiers through the Find My network.
Another privacy feature of the Find My network is that all the data relayed to Apple is completely anonymous. That means that the second your AirTag pings an iPhone, for example, the information for both devices is kept completely hidden from Apple.
By keeping this information anonymous from the beginning, there is no personal data relayed through the network or Apple's systems. It also means that the owner of a missing device can't see which other devices were used in the network.
Why the Find My Network Is Exciting
Apple's Find My network is really exciting. It takes advantage of peer-to-peer networking, which is where devices form a network by connecting to one another. It's similar to peer-to-peer file sharing.
Using peer-to-peer networks brings a big advantage. You can extend the range of a network infinitely. This means that no matter where in the world you've left something with an AirTag on, there should always be an Apple device that can help to locate it.
That's pretty cool, right?
It's not truly an independent peer-to-peer network, though, as the Find My network still relies on Apple's relaying system. However, it's still a brilliant implementation of the technology and a major step forward.
Another reason the Find My network is so exciting is that it introduces a brand-new system for working out the location of Bluetooth trackers.
Before, a Bluetooth tracker would need a GPS system to work out where it was when separated from a paired phone. This never happened, as it was too complicated of a system. You would have needed a dedicated GPS tracker.
The Find My network determines an exact location using the small U1 chip in AirTags as well as the additional hardware in other devices. Not only does this bring ease of use to the consumer, but it also makes things easier for Apple in the manufacturing process.
Being able to work out such a precise location from such a small bit of hardware is not only impressive, it also improves the quality of location determining. This creates a much better system in general, which gives users a higher quality experience.
The Future of Location
The Find My network seems to indicate the future of location detection. Any Apple device can determine its location by pinging signals to other nearby Apple devices on the network. The use of a peer-to-peer network and ultra-wideband device-locating in this way is almost entirely unique to Apple.
If all location gets determined in this way in the future, finding lost devices will be a lot easier, a lot more precise, and potentially a lot cheaper.
Image credits: Apple