I would be lost without it – six colors

Six colors -subscriber -Amponic asked:

Does an Apple Watch find mine without mobile phone update?

This is a surprisingly complicated question that is to be answered because the unique place of the Apple Watch in the Find My -Ökosystem. The TL; DR is at the end of this article, but there is an interesting journey that we can do to get there.

Find my offer device and my article tracking

Apple suffers from the problem of the characteristic proliferation and maturity. There are so many automated components, integrated elements, independent apps and systems that they do not all get the same attention. Find my IS, luckily not one of them. Apple has emerged like an extraordinary amount of efforts for the perfection of Find My, from the introduction to the addition of Airtag and other trackers. It even agreed to an industry compatible standard to prevent stalkers and unwanted persecution. Apple and Google apps to track their own devices are now taking those of the other company.

Perhaps this is due to the value of finding lost things. For this reason, Apple recently expanded the common location access to the airtails and similar articles for this reason. If one of these articles is lost, you can temporarily share the location with someone else or even fall into the lost luggage form of an airline.

There are a number of different things that are shown in Find My. There are devices (hardware with displays and most audio equipment), persons who have given them permission to see their whereabouts and trackers from which some are now embedded in things like bicycle theft alarms.

Apple divides things into things Devices And Article How to report your location:

• Elements have no internet connection and rely on the find frequency function of my network.
• Devices with an internet connection update your location at regular intervals if you have an active link. This information is connected to your iCloud account.

Find my thing that is not on the Internet

Identify all iPhones, iPads and Macs with a live internet connection Bluetooth -Broadcast names in their area that have used a specific pattern that has set up Apple. This includes both elements that can only transmit their location and cannot connect to a network, as well as in the Internet-enabled devices that cannot currently connect.

The Bluetooth -Broadcast name contains encrypted information that only the find that my article or the device owner can decode. A device with an internet connection passes on the Bluetooth name with its calculated or GPS location information to Apple server. Here are a few scenarios:

• You brought your Mac to a café and not connected to the network. Its identity will be transmitted via Bluetooth as well as iPads and iPhones with mobile phone or Wi-Fi compounds and Macs associated with Wi-Fi, or a personal hotspot will forward this.

• You have parked your car in a huge garage and cannot find it, but anyone who came by an iPhone that can reach a mobile network has in the meantime forwarded their location.

• Someone only stolen their iPad with Wi-Fi and uses an e-bike to roll away. If you use the Lost mode in the Find My App, you can follow your location via the iPhone of the thief (if you have one) or the iPhones or other devices that you say goodbye on your trip.

If you want to find the location of an element or device, start my. Find the location of all devices that you own on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch or iCloud.com are displayed and devices in your family release group with the site tracking permit made possible for this person. To see items that you have or have been shared with you, you need to use a native app. iCloud.com cannot be displayed item locations and crowdsourced locations, as this requires an encryption required by end-to-end device base, which is not yet supported in iCloud.com. (Apple cannot decode either. Find my network location and my owner data.)

(There is an exception! If you temporarily share access to an article to get help to restore something you have lost or that has been stolen, the person uses this link a web app to display the location.)

This is a lot of preamble to reach the answer!

The Apple Watch has been a strange hybrid since the introduction of the mobile function. An Apple Watch with Wi-Fi can connect independently to Wi-Fi networks, for which a connection was saved by its paired iPhone. You can also join a network itself via the device, since Watchos 5 do not enjoy a long alphanumeric and sign character with the tiny keyboard on the screen.

So the answer is: yes! But with many different circumstances for an Apple Watch with only Wi-Fi:

• Wi-Fi only Apple Watch, iPhone nearby, connected the iPhone with mobile phone: Your iPhone sends your Apple Watch location to your iCloud account via the Internet.

• Wi-Fi only Apple Watch, no iPhone nearby, connection to the Wi-Fi network: Your Apple Watch sends your location directly via the Internet to your iCloud account. (It does not use GPS, but approaches the Wi-Fi positioning.)

• All other cases: Your Apple Watch acts effectively like a find my article and sends its identity via Bluetooth for relay of devices nearby with an active internet connection.

(If you have an Apple Watch with GPS + Cellular and have an active mobile phone connection there, GPS is also used to transfer the current location.)

Like a tree in the forest, it falls and makes a sound without hearing it to hear it^{A Apple watch without an internet connection via Wi-Fi, mobile radio or a paired iPhone and not near the Apple device of another user cannot update its location.}

If this was not enough to find mine for you, I wrote an entire book on this topic indelibly. Take control of Find My and Airtags. Contact this title, if you are looking for more details to set up elements, understand how devices are persecuted, stop stalking or are aware of signs when someone is trying to pursue them and work with warnings and privacy if they and other people share their location.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His upcoming books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (June 2025) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing, June 3, 2025).]

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