This Apple Watch Feature Saved a Once-in-a-Lifetime Family Trip

I woke up groggy in the Austin airport, my head aching from where I’d pillowed it on my lumpy backpack. My purse was close to me, our boarding passes for my family’s 5 a.m. departure tucked protectively in one side. Then one panicked thought jolted into my head: WHERE WAS MY PHONE?

Let’s backtrack: My husband, teen daughter and I were flying from Seattle to Cleveland for the April 8 total solar eclipse. Through a weird tangle of events, we missed our departing flight. The only new flight we could nab left us stuck from midnight to 5 a.m., sleeping on the airport floor in Texas’ capital city. 

If you’ve ever planned a long-awaited trip for your family and watched it start to go wrong, you know my mind was pinging like a ball in a pinball machine. There were a million threads I was trying to weave together to save this spring break adventure. 

And because it’s 2024, 999,999 of those threads required use of my iPhone. From rebooking the flight to alerting our hotel that we’d be late to locating our luggage, I was constantly tapping and calling on my trusty phone screen.

But I’d dozed off for 2 or 3 hours on the cold floor of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, and somehow when I woke, that phone was not in my hand, pocket or purse. Had I left it somewhere in our sleepy late-night trek through the airport? Was it perched on a bathroom sink or sitting on top of a vending machine? Or worse, had some early-morning traveler spotted it while I slept and made off with it?

Then I remembered: I was wearing my Apple Watch. Even though the battery was ticking worryingly low, it still had power. I pressed the side button under the digital crown. It brought up a screen of icons, including one showing a ringing smartphone. One press and I heard the most delightful sound my ears could hear, a sweetly persistent BING BING BING. 

Apple Watch comes with a feature that will beep a lost…