After almost a decade of using the Apple Watch, you might think you’d know all the tips and tricks by heart. But this one may surprise you—and I have to admit I had never heard of this ingenious little trick making the rounds on Reddit.
It involves a basic function that’s been built in since the first version of watchOS, the one that lets you ping your iPhone via the Apple Watch’s Control Center (provided the iPhone is within Bluetooth range of the watch). We all know how this simple and useful function works—all you have to do is bring up the Control Center on your watch by pressing the side button. Then tap the ping icon, which depicts a ringing iPhone, and you’ll hear a loud ringing on the phone so you can locate it.
But here’s the trick: if you tap and hold the icon, you’ll also receive visual feedback in addition to the acoustic ping: the LED light on the back of the phone will flash briefly. This is particularly useful in dark rooms, so you can easily see where your iPhone is hiding.
On compatible devices such as the iPhone 15 and the Apple Watch Series 9, the long tap also brings up the Precision Finding interface, which helps navigate you to the phone. The iPhone emits an acoustic signal once and the instructions on the watch display show you the distance to the smartphone and its approximate direction. If the iPhone is in the immediate vicinity, the Apple Watch display lights up green and the iPhone rings twice.
During the search, you can ping the iPhone again and again; the icon for this appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the display. Just note that the iPhone must be locked for the LED signal to work when pinging the Apple Watch. If the iPhone is unlocked, you’ll only get the audio ping.
