My Notify When Left Behind shows “Not Supported” for AirPods Pro

Sylvur wrote:

Literally just finished a chat with Apple Support about this same problem. AirPods Pro (4A400) and iPhone 11 Pro (iOS 15.1). They eventually said they found documentation saying the feature requires an iPhone 12 or newer. I asked why and they said they were unable to confirm the exact reason.

Very disappointing. I’ve found nothing anywhere public facing about iPhone 12 and newer being a requirement.

This does not match my observation. All my devices are able to show my AirPods Pro, Find My shows "with me" as location (the AirPods are within 2 metres, have been in the charging case and not moved all day).

MacBook Air, 13" M1, macOS 12.0.1

iPhone XS Max, iOS 15.1

iPad Pro (9.7") iPadOS 15.1

Apple Watch Series 7, WatchOS 8.1

So clearly the ability to locate does not appear to be something related to age of device or the chipset used.

However, there is an anomaly in the ability to notify when AirPods Pro are left behind:

Apple Watch says the function is On, has configuration options enabled, and will notify when AirPods are separated from iPhone.

MacBook Air is similar to Apple Watch and also adds an option to configure safe zone where an alert will not be triggered.

iPad is similar to MBA

iPhone (which is the supposed recipient of notifications) has the Notifications option for AirPods greyed out and unavailable.

Note: I have not yet tried leaving my AirPods anywhere except at home which is a safe zone so I have no idea if the notification works to my iPhone.

I suspect the inability to set and configure notification might be a bug in iOS15.x so it would be worth (a) testing on any other Apple devices in your collection,

and

(b) reporting a bug through the Feedback pages, https://www.apple.com/feedback/

I too am also having the same issue with my AirPods pro and iPhone 11. I personally believe it is a software bug to do with the iPhone 11 models as it seems that iPhone 12 and 13 users aren’t having many issues. I hope that a software update will fix this soon.

Literally just finished a chat with Apple Support about this same problem. AirPods Pro (4A400) and iPhone 11 Pro (iOS 15.1). They eventually said they found documentation saying the feature requires an iPhone 12 or newer. I asked why and they said they were unable to confirm the exact reason.

Very disappointing. I’ve found nothing anywhere public facing about iPhone 12 and newer being a requirement.

Ipadsad2 wrote:

It seams to work if you have an apple

watch or iPad. I was able to enable it on both. Not sure if it works, I have to test it.

I think we are looking at a bug in iOS15.x, see my response to Sylvur in this thread, which I posted before I noticed you are the OP. Like you, I still have to test the notification and see if it works

My iPhone 11 Pro (iOS 15.1) does not even have the option to turn on separation alerts for my AirPods pro (firmware 4A402).

Me too

My case is even more strange. It doesn’t show it as option for my AirPods Pro.