It’s possible that Apple is developing a Locate My Apple Pencil feature, but it’s going to need a stylus that can vibrate when it’s close by.
- The Find My network and acoustic signals could both be supported by a future Apple Pencil to track its whereabouts.
- Users would benefit from this because the Pencil’s size makes it very simple to misplace.
- Unfortunately, because certain devices lack a built-in speaker, they are unable to produce sound, hence a function like this cannot be added to them via software.
Perhaps Locate My Apple Pencil is in the works
While using the Find My app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and iCloud.com to find a misplaced device, it can be useful to play a high-pitched sound. In Lost Mode, you can command a device to create a sound that will assist you locate it once you’re close by. Over the course of around two minutes, the sound is steadily amplified.
Might Apple add support for the Find My network to the current Pencil models?
It could. The Find My network detects and reports a missing device’s position using the Bluetooth on the Pencil. Yet finding the tiny stylus is more difficult if it doesn’t make a nearby user aware of its presence in the real world.
Apple might try to address this issue with a new Pencil in the future.
It recently submitted a patent application to the US Patent & Trademark Office with the application number 20230161545, which outlines how to play a sound and create vibrations using acoustic resonators built into the device’s end cap.
Acoustic resonators could come with the Apple Pencil
The innovation, titled «Peripheral device with acoustic resonators,» describes using acoustic resonators to find a lost stylus or other peripheral input device. The haptic feedback module is now housed in the cap at the top of the stylus; in one design, the resonators might be put there instead.
Apple claims that acoustic resonators built into stylus housing structures can help find a missing stylus or other peripheral input device.
The document goes on to say that «acoustic resonators can be constructed at an end of the stylus opposite its tip and can include portions of the stylus outer housing that are reduced down to an engineering thickness that has a particular resonant behavior or frequency.»
In accordance with the description, «the drive signal generated at the haptic module can be conveyed to the acoustic resonators by a route of material that mechanically couples the acoustic resonators to the haptic module.»
A resonant frequency’s significance
A medium vibrates with the greatest amplitude when an acoustic resonator emits the resonant frequency that causes this. According to Apple’s proposal, your iPhone would make a noise that matched the resonance frequency of the Apple Pencil cap.
If your hearing is excellent and the stylus is nearby, doing so would cause an Apple Pencil to audibly vibrate, making it simpler to discover if you’re within Bluetooth range. For those who are curious, the patent application does not allow for the software implementation of this feature on the current Pencil models.
Will this invention ever be used?
Whether Apple will include acoustic resonators in the next Pencil or a later version is unknown. Furthermore, there is no assurance that this innovation will ever be used in practice because Apple frequently patents alternative ideas as a defensive tactic.
With an iPad, find a misplaced Pencil
Owners of the first- and second-generation Apple Pencils can use our advice on how to locate a misplaced Apple Pencil on an iPad in the interim. One of the suggestions is to navigate to Settings > Bluetooth and check to see whether your Pencil appears there. If it does, that means your stylus is within Bluetooth’s 10 to 15 foot (about five meter) range.
Downloading a specialist Bluetooth tracker app is required for another method. Both options can only be used to find a misplaced Apple stylus on a map if you are within Bluetooth range, thus they are only of limited value.