If you own a pair of AirPods, you’ll know how valuable they are. The problem with AirPods though, is that they are easy to lose. Luckily, Apple makes it easy to track your AirPods. All you have to do is use the Find My AirPods app to track your AirPods. It’s worth remembering that you can only do this if your AirPods are up to 30 feet away so if you lose them in your home or at school, it should be fairly easy to find them. You’ll also need to make sure that they are connected to your personal iCloud account.
This is very easy to do and only takes a couple of minutes;
- Go to the iCloud website where you can log in to your account using your Apple ID and password. This must be the account that you linked to your AirPods.
- Then, you’ll need to use the Find iPhone feature on the iCloud website. Choose AirPods from the All Devices menu. iCloud will then begin to search for the devices, and if it is successful you’ll be presented with the exact location of your AirPods on a map display.
- If the AirPods are still connected to your Apple device, they will be symbolized by a green dot. If they’re no longer online and cannot be located, you’ll instead be presented with a grey dot icon.
If you’re lucky enough to see the green icon which indicates that your AirPods are still online, click on it. This will cause an ‘I’ button to be presented to you in a pop-up window.
There will be a feature labeled ‘Play Sound’ listed in the pop-up window. You’ll need to click on this, which will cause a sound to be played from your missing AirPods. This is useful if you think your Airpods are still nearby.
If your AirPods have indeed been stolen, you’ve now got the location of the AirPods, providing they’re still online. You can then choose to either take further action to get them back by reporting them as stolen.
However, this method becomes fairly useless if you lose your Airpods outside and you have no idea where they are. Unfortunately, Airpods don’t come with an activation lock like other Apple devices and so if someone finds them and decides to keep them, they can use them almost instantly. If they have a charging case, they can reset your AirPods and pair them with their own devices which will cause them to disappear from your radar.
Can you track reset Airpods?
The short answer is, unfortunately, no. If someone resets your AirPods, it becomes impossible to locate and track them, especially if you’re far away from them. This is why it’s incredibly important to track your AirPods as soon as you realize that you’ve misplaced them. The key here is time, you want to track them whilst they are still online and synced to your iCloud account.
How to reset your AirPods
In some instances, you may have lost your AirPods and then found them or lent them to a friend who may have connected them to their own iCloud account. In this case, the other person will be able to track the AirPods and so to avoid privacy issues, you should look to reset them to their factory settings. Other people that have connected to your Airpods can not only track you but can cause the beeping noise on your AirPods to go off. This may seem like a funny prank at first but it gets old quickly.
Here’s how to reset your AirPods;
- Put your AirPods in their case.
- Hold down the button at the back until the white light at the front of the case flashes.
- Your AirPods are now reset.
After this process, you’ll need to make sure you sync your AirPods back to your Apple device.
The Bottom Line
Unfortunately, it’s very common for AirPods to get lost or be stolen due to their size. Always make sure you know where they are and only lend them to people you trust. You stand a better chance of tracking your AirPods yourself than asking Apple or the Police for help so make sure you have your tracking app on your iPhone so you’re ready to spring into action if you think you’ve lost them.
