The Share Item Location feature is available in the iOS 18.2 public beta, and Apple is incorporating it as an exciting new way to locate lost items. This feature lets your users safely share the location of a lost AirTag or Find My-enabled device with other people, so finding your lost or mishandled things is easier.
Enhanced Recovery for Travelers
Share Item Location, which forms part of Apple’s widely used Find My network, is available in beta and offers users a safe and easy method for sharing the location of an item for a short time. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, highlighted the tool’s key utilizations and stressed that Global users love it. She also explained that users globally rely on ‘Find My’ to keep track of belongings while protecting their privacy.
The feature can be used by users within the Find My app, who can generate a secure link to share with family, friends, or airlines as they activate the feature. Each time the item’s location updates, the interactive map refreshes to show recipients the item’s location on an interactive map and a timestamp. In typical privacy fashion, links auto expire in seven days and owners can remove them when they wish. If the item is recovered, the tracking feature turns itself off right away, giving users the maximum control over the item.
Major Airlines Join the Initiative
As a remarkable collaboration, Apple partnered with over 15 major airlines including Aer Lingus, Delta, United, British Airways, and Lufthansa. Starting later this year, these airlines will integrate the Find My network into their baggage tracking systems to find misplaced stuff. The goal behind this feature is to reduce the worry that travelers have when bags are delayed or mishandled.
The tool will be rolled out first in some airports and should be widely available by early 2025, said United Airlines. “We are committed to helping customers locate their luggage easily and safely, giving our agents and passengers added peace of mind,” notes United’s Chief Customer Officer David Kinzelman.
The feature will also be added to Delta Air Lines’ baggage recovery process, where Senior VP of Delta, Erik Snell, said, ‘This partnership with Apple will allow Delta to better rejoin customers with their items.’ Other IAG member airlines have made similar commitments to customer service enhancements through Find My, and British Airways has done so as well.
Technology Integration with WorldTracer
SITA will also make Apple’s Share Item Location functionality part of the global WorldTracer baggage-tracing system. The integration will help airlines to further streamline baggage tracking in the face of growing global travel demands, as it is currently used by more than 500 airlines and ground handlers at over 2,800 airports. The partnership is “an important industry advance,” says Nicole Hogg, Director of Baggage at SITA, who notes that it could reduce the baggage recovery pain for millions of passengers.
Privacy-First Design of Apple’s Find My Network
Find My is built on top of a privacy-first foundation, utilizing a massive, over a billion device crowdsourced network of Apple devices to detect and find missing items over Bluetooth. Importantly, all information is end-to-end encrypted, because only users can see the location data. This information is inaccessible to even Find My/accessory manufacturers and Apple as well.
It is a groundbreaking and useful new tool to be added to the recovering missing items experience that is in place everywhere for Apple’s new iOS 18.2. The Share Item Location feature seeks to give travelers more control over their privacy, while simultaneously setting new standards of both customer service and data security in travel.
