iOS 18.2 beta 2 has introduced a big change to the Find My app that should make recruiting help to find your lost items and devices much easier.
MacRumors spotted the addition of a new Share Item Location feature in the app, which as you may guess from the name, lets you send out a link to anyone with the tracking details of something you've lost. Find My previously allowed you to share item locations with your contacts, but this can be sent to people outside your address book too, with Apple giving the example of finding lost luggage by sharing it with your airline in the description.
As it's a link you're sharing, you can access the shared location on any device, Apple-made or not. The link lasts a week before expiring (or until you mark the item as found), and you can see how many people have checked the link to track who has (or hasn't) been looking for your lost property.
There's also an option to "Show Contact Info". When someone finds your item, they can connect to it with a phone or tablet to then access details, like a phone number or email address, to let you know they've got your stuff.
Lost but not alone
Even if we're careful, devices get misplaced or taken (be it innocently or maliciously), and sometimes when that happens, you're relying on the kindness of strangers to help you out. Rather than requiring you to make a search party of only your friends and family, Share Item Location seems like a great expansion of Find My to allow lost items to be more easily found and returned.
Apple's Find My features apply to all its mobile devices, so whatever combination of iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch or AirPods you use, you'll benefit from this feature. That applies even more if you use an AirTag or a different Find My-supporting key finder, as item location sharing can then help you locate anything you can fit the tracker on or in.
iOS 18.2's second dev beta also added the option to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus through your iPhone's Settings. Seeing as you can access ChatGPT via Siri or Visual Intelligence as part of iOS 18.2, offering users the option to pay to access the best version of the ChatGPT experience on their device makes sense, even if most users are likely perfectly fine using the free version via their iPhone.
We expect the first public beta of iOS 18.2 to arrive later this month, as Apple has promised the stable version for all compatible iPhone users will be available by December.
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