Apple's new Find My accessory program goes beyond iPhones and tracking fobs

With iOS 14, Apple is set to expand the use of the Find My app by finally allow the integration of third-party tracking devices such as those from Tile via a new accessory program.

Apple replaced Find My Friends with iOS 13, giving way to the Find My app that combined the Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps. It was limited to solely Apple products, however. Macs, iPads, Apple Watch, AirPods would all have their location highlighted in the app. But iOS 14 now brings that to third-party gear.

The new Find My network accessory program allows any other important items to show within the Find My app which can include anything from object trackers such as Tile or any other devices that can be integrated into the platform. Apple hasn't noted one way or the other, but it is likely many types of devices could be included here such as remotes, portable speakers, et cetera.

Find My will add support for finding third-party products and accessories with the new Find My network accessory program. This will allow customers to use the Find My app to locate other important items in their lives, in addition to their Apple devices. User privacy remains central to the Find My network with end-to-end encryption built-in.

Apple says the first release of the Find My network accessory program spec is available now and will launch of users this fall with iOS 14.

It has been rumored for a long while that Apple is developing its own tracking solution for other objects, similar to Tile's approach.

8 Comments

doozydozen 539 comments · 11 Years

About 4 years ago

So Tile is not doomed, yet at least, in fact, Apple is enhancing their built-in features. This is an interesting approach.

dutchlord 274 comments · 7 Years

Where are the Air Tags?

DAalseth 3033 comments · 6 Years

dutchlord said:

Where are the Air Tags?

It's possible they were mythical. People heard about these improvements and thought they were for an Apple product. Or it was a rumor that Apple itself let out to smoke out people in house who were leaking.

Flytrap 61 comments · 7 Years

Well played, Apple. Restricting access to the U1 chip to only Apple-branded Air Tags would certainly attract unwelcome anti-trust attention... especially from the European Commission. Now it is a level competitive playing field... for both Tiles and Air Tags... or is it... really !?

With every accessory maker now having direct access to the same Find My APIs as Tile, why does anyone still need Tile... Surely most accessory manufacturers will eventually integrate their accessories directly into the Find My API... then any Apple device with the ultra-wide-band (UWB) U1 chip built-in will be able to detect and report lost accessories that can transmit a short-range radio signal such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, RFID, Key Cards, etc. in the Find My app.

According to ETSI (European version of FCC), the following categories of consumer devices can be detected by Apple's U1 UWB chip:

Baby Monitors
Alarm Systems
Access Cards
Digital Car Keys
Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Devices
Zigbee Devices
Digital Transmission Systems (DTS)
RFID Tags
Remote Control Cars
NFC Tags
MiFare Tags and Stickers
Wide Band Medical Telemetry Systems (WMTS)
Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS)

fastasleep 6450 comments · 14 Years

DAalseth said:

dutchlord said:

Where are the Air Tags?

It's possible they were mythical. People heard about these improvements and thought they were for an Apple product. Or it was a rumor that Apple itself let out to smoke out people in house who were leaking.

Nope

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/09/20/apple-tags-user-interface-discovered-in-internal-build-of-ios-13
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/04/02/unreleased-airtags-name-spotted-in-apples-own-support-video