applThe next time you forget where you kept your Apple Watch and want to find it fast, you can actually use your iPhone to ping it. Until now, you could ping your Apple Watch using the Find My app, but that is more geared toward times when you’ve lost the watch or if it’s been stolen. But for all the times when your Apple Watch finds its way into the deep dark corners of your couch, this new ping feature is all you need.
How to ping your Apple Watch from the iPhone
To get started, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 17. You can do this easily right now if you hop on to the public beta, but be sure to backup your iPhone before you do so. Although the public beta is stable enough, you don’t want to risk losing data on your primary iPhone in case something goes wrong.
Once you’re on iOS 17, go to Settings > Control Center on your iPhone, and scroll to the bottom. Press the green + button next to Find My Watch. You can now go into the Control Center by swiping downwards from the top-right corner of your iPhone’s screen, and tap the watch icon.
This will ping your Apple Watch quickly. The sound is the same as the one used when you ping your iPhone. The Ping My Watch feature works even when your Apple Watch is locked and on silent mode, and you don’t need to update your Apple Watch to watchOS 10 for this feature to work—you can use the feature even if your Apple Watch is still on watchOS 9.
