Since I got my iPhone 13 Pro on Friday, I’ve been trying out the MagSafe lifestyle — including the new MagSafe Leather Wallet with support for Find My. Although I was a bit disappointed that Apple didn’t just stitch an AirTag right into the leather, the feature they did ship is still pretty handy: the wallet has a unique NFC tag inside that does a handshake with your iPhone when attached and detached. This allows the Find My app to note the last location where the Wallet was removed, and optionally send you a push notification after about one minute of separation. This feature in theory would prevent me from ever losing my wallet — if it ever unknowingly escaped from my phone, I would be notified within a minute that it was missing. In practice, however, I just get a needless notification every time I get home and disconnect my wallet at the door.
Apple’s AirTags have a similar “item left behind” feature in Find My — when you leave an AirTag behind, you get a push notification to let you know. The big difference? Apple lets you set specific locations to not notify you if an item is left there — like your own home, for instance. The UI for these two features looks almost identical except for this missing location filter for the MagSafe Wallet, which I hope means it would be an easy feature for Apple to add in a software update. I’m hopeful that they do so soon — I know that I’ve disconnected my wallet at home, I just need my wallet to know that too! And while they’re at it, I feel like it wouldn’t be to much to ask for some customization options to the disconnect duration, or even some added location-awareness to these notifications. If I disconnect my wallet in a drive-through for the requisite one minute while getting out my credit card, does my phone really need to buzz? Maybe the notification could be customized to only fire once your iPhone leaves the area. The way the wallet is designed essentially requires you to detach it to access any cards, after all.