Traveling Soon? Apple's Big Find My Upgrade Might Just Save Your Luggage

Apple has announced a new feature that will help users securely share the location of their lost luggage, or misplaced Apple devices, with airline service providers across the globe. The feature — known as Share Item Location — is part of the Find My system, and is now available as part of the iOS 18.2 beta update. The feature covers all Apple devices that support Find My tracking, and any other item or luggage attached to the AirTags object tracker. Apple says it has partnered with more than 15 airline services (with more to follow) to help users share the location of their missing items, and that their respective assistance services will kick into action in the coming months.

For now, the list includes familiar names like Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Turkish Airlines, United, and Virgin Atlantic. These companies, as part of their standard customer service protocols, will start accepting Share Item Location links and help users when needed. Apple says the whole pipeline of sharing item tracking links with service providers will be end-to-end encrypted, which means a bad actor won't be able to intercept and decipher it. SlashGear has verified that the feature is already live for devices running iOS 18.2 Beta update.

Let's say you lost an Apple gadget, or a bag with an AirTag on it. In order to help recover it, simply open the Find My app on any Apple device, and generate the Share Item Location link. After getting the link, the recipient — an airline service provider, in this case — will land on a map view where they will be able to check the location of the reported missing item.

"The website will automatically update when a new location is available and will show a timestamp of the most recent update," explains Apple. As a safety protocol, all recipients will be asked to verify their identity before they can access the tracking dashboard. This is done to ensure that an unintended person doesn't get access to the live location of an item, which, otherwise, would be a privacy nightmare.

This authentication will proceed either via an Apple Account (if the link's recipient is already a part of the Family Sharing group or an ecosystem member), or a registered email address. SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques), which serves aviation players across the world, will also add support for the feature in its WorldTracer baggage tracking system. Doing so would automatically extend Apple's Share Item Location feature to more than 500 airlines serving over 2,800 airports globally.