"Unknown accessory detected near you" on iPhone

If you carry two phones, but only use one set of airpods for both phones. One phone will track your airpods and report them like an apple tag. When trying to locate the alert, open the case on your airpods. It will report to the phone its information.

More than likely, you are not being tracked by some random stranger.

I wonder if this is related to the feature of Find My Network, which allows the Find my iPhone to report locations even when the phone is turned off. I just enabled that on my phone and it seems to correlate with the error message I just got.

Thank you everyone that commented on my post, to give you an update, it was my AirPods that were not being recognized by my iPhone at the time of that event. I followed the recommendations of many of you, like going out without AirPods and check if the issue persisted, and it didn’t and also, signed out of my iCloud account and back in. And haven’t had any issues since.

I’m a student so first thing I did was I alerted my campus security and they asked me to file a police report in case it turned into something more serious.

But as I mentioned for me, it turned out to be my AirPods malfunctioning at that moment.

Hope this helps!

I received a notification saying that ‘an unknown device is tracking you’ and ‘first seen with you at 12:58am’. I do not own any airpods, my husband does but he was in the car only after 12pm but this thing tracked my location even before that. Ar 12:58am my car was on the driveway and ring cameras don’t show anyone near it. So is this still the same bug?

I honestly don't know unfortunately. I just noticed that the Findmy app wrongfully considered my Airpods as an unknown device and was trying to help anyone else who might have this problem as it was really annoying. You should try to see if the message keeps coming and then maybe search your car for an Airtag or something else

It gave me an option: u want to keep allowing this device to track you: yes/no. I hit no. And i looked for Airtags as much as i could see under the car and wheel well and what not but couldn’t see anything.

It didn’t cross my mind to allow it to keep tracking me and then ping it or try to find where it is.

I MAY have a fix. This has been happening to us as well for 2+ months now

,I have spent hours on the home with Apple on our family shared account as we all were receiving the notifications and nothing has helped until now and here is what seems to be working for us. First off, remove apple AirPods from your Apple ID account completely. Then restore the AirPods completely as to a new condition by opening the cover and holding down the back pair button for 15 sec or more until light on the front pulsates in white light. Then, and this is very important! Go away from your home or business or school WIFI! You need to be on cell signal only, Go a few blocks away and then pair the AirPods to original owner ONLY, …… Since doing these steps, we are not getting the notifications that unknown AirPods are following you notifications anymore, I hope this helps, please let me know.

I MAY have a fix. This has been happening to us as well for 2+ months now

,I have spent hours on the home with Apple on our family shared account as we all were receiving the notifications and nothing has helped until now and here is what seems to be working for us. First off, remove apple AirPods from your Apple ID account completely. Then restore the AirPods completely as to a new condition by opening the cover and holding down the back pair button for 15 sec or more until light on the front pulsates in white light. Then, and this is very important! Go away from your home or business or school WIFI! You need to be on cell signal only, Go a few blocks away and then pair the AirPods to original owner ONLY, …… Since doing these steps, we are not getting the notifications that unknown AirPods are following you notifications anymore, I hope this helps, please let me know.

So I was visiting family in in a different state. I mistakenly took my cousins AirPods instead of mine and flew with them back home. I drove from my house and picked up and friend to go snowboard. I didn’t know I was being tracked the whole day. Okay hen I dropped him off at home he realized the notification and he told me that something was tracking us all day. So I first thought it was an airtag someone put on my car. Now I think it was my cousins AirPods I accidentally took and maybe it thinks they are stolen?? Can someone please let me know. This is confused and really unsettling. I searched my car for airtags but didn’t find any, going to continue to look tomorrow

Did u ever figure it out ? this happened to me tonight and i can’t find an airtag anywhere.

Where you able to fix this issue? Its happening to me

this is happening to me too and it’s worrying me bc i’m a young woman who travels alone. did anyone figure it out