Find My on Mac: locate your tags from the desk

Can you see your tags in Find My on a Mac?

Yes, every item registered to your Apple Account shows in the Mac app, in the same list and on the same map as on the phone, because items belong to an account rather than to a device. Apple gives the requirement as macOS Catalina or later with the Mac signed in to iCloud. Nothing has to be paired again and nothing has to be enabled per tracker; a tag added from an iPhone in March appears on a Mac bought in September.

Where is the Find My app on a Mac?

It is a standard application, installed with the system, named Find My. Three ways to reach it:

1. Press Command and Space, type the first few letters, press Return. You will see the app open with a map filling most of the window.
2. Open the Applications folder in Finder and scroll to it alphabetically.
3. Open Launchpad and look in the first screen of icons.

Down the left edge are three tabs: People, Devices and Items. Click Items and your trackers are listed by the names you gave them, each with a location line underneath.

How do you ring a tag from a Mac?

Select the tag in the Items list and the panel on the right shows a Play Sound button; click it and the tracker's alarm starts. What you will notice is that this works when the tag is within Bluetooth reach of an Apple device that can pass the instruction along, most often the Mac itself, or a phone or tablet of yours sitting in the same building. It is a short-range command by design rather than a signal sent around the world, so ringing something two streets away is not what it is for.

In a British house with the router, the Mac and the tag all on different floors, this is usually the quickest route to a set of keys that has gone into a coat pocket.

Can you add a new tracker from a Mac?

No, and it is worth knowing before you sit down with a new tracker and a coffee. The Add Other Item flow lives on iPhone and iPad; the Mac shows what already exists. Pair the tracker on the handset, give it a name there, and it will be waiting on the computer within seconds.

The same is true of the small administrative jobs, renaming an item, choosing its emoji, turning a separation alert on. Do those on the phone.

What can you see from a browser instead?

Sign in to iCloud in a browser and the same items are listed there, which is the answer when you are at somebody else's machine or on a work computer that is not yours to sign into permanently. Sign out afterwards, particularly on a shared desk, because anything signed into your account can see where everything you own is.

This is also the honest reason to keep a strong passcode on the Apple Account itself. The items list is a map of your possessions.

Why does the Mac sometimes show an older location than the phone?

Because both are showing the same thing: the last confirmed sighting of that tag by a passing Apple device, and neither computes it independently. If the phone looks fresher it is usually because the phone is the device currently near the tag, so it is doing the reporting. Pull down to refresh on the handset, or close and reopen the window on the Mac, and the two agree.

A location that is hours old on both is not a Mac problem at all. It means nothing has walked past the tracker since. our piece on accuracy explains what the timestamp is telling you.

How Orbit Tag helps

Orbit Tag needs no special handling for any of the above, and that is the whole argument for buying a certified accessory rather than an own-app gadget. It registers as an Other Item, so the software you are clicking at your desk is Apple's, already installed, already signed in, with nothing of ours to download onto a Mac and no second password to remember.

The tracker's own contribution is the part a computer cannot do. Its alarm runs 80 to 100 dB and answers Play Sound from anywhere within the quoted 60 m of Bluetooth, which is what actually finds a set of keys once you are in the right room. Outside that, passing Apple devices keep a recent confirmed position on the map, encrypted so that only your own account can read it.

Physically: 36.3 mm square, 9 mm deep, about 10 g, IP67, ring hole through the moulding, two rings supplied, one CR2032 lasting something like two years. Pairing is done on an iPhone or iPad running 14.5 at the oldest, there is no Android version, and no ultra-wideband chip.

Two per box, under £15, free UK delivery. see the whole specification.