A "Find My" oddity

[DaveWT]

My wife has an M2 MacBook Air and an iPhone 13, with "Find My" turned on for both devices. It is normal for her to head into town with her iPhone while the MB Air stays at home, and even if we go up Island for the day (perhaps as far as Cambell River) to only take the iPhone.

We have just been on a 2 and a half week road trip to California, wth the laptop in the trunk of the car and while spending many days in the Santa Clara area the laptop stayed in the hotel while we drove about with only our iPhones.

The oddity was driving back from California and one day, several hours into the drive, my wife received a notification on her iPhone that she was separated from her laptop. She then worried that I had failed to pack the laptop in the trunk when we left the hotel that morning and I had to pull over and show her I had not left it behind. This happened once again another day of our return trip.

So I am curious what triggered such a notification and do we have some setting wrong?

Dave

 

[chas_m]

I don’t think you have any settings wrong. You were probably driving through an area where there was no way for the phone to check the location of the MBA (no triangulation ability due to lack of Wi-Fi), so it reports it as separated.

As you’ve experienced, these location checks are not constant, but sporadic, and may require the item to be disconnected from Wi-Fi for quite a while before it reports it as separated.

 

[DaveWT]

Interesting thoughts. We have certainly been away from the MBA (and away from wifi connections) for much longer periods and it never did this before. The good news is that I didn't get in trouble for leaving the MBA behind in the hotel room which was then a couple of hours behind us.

 

[chas_m]

Interesting thoughts. We have certainly been away from the MBA (and away from wifi connections) for much longer periods and it never did this before. The good news is that I didn't get in trouble for leaving the MBA behind in the hotel room which was then a couple of hours behind us.

Lucky. I once lost an iPad that way. Didn't have Find My back then, and the hotel was uncooperative on trying to get it back.