‘Find My’ alternative to ‘Play Sound’ on family member’s device

Introductory Fluff

Somewhat regularly my partner misplaces her phone in the house, I want a ‘single tap’ solution to play a noise on her device to assist the finding of the lost iPhone.

• Asking Siri to do this is fraught with danger, most likely ending in disappointment and another few seconds of my life I will not get back.
• Grabbing my phone, unlocking it, launching Find My, navigating to devices, finding her phone, triggering ‘Play Sound’ is a multi-action process.

At the time of writing there is no iOS Shortcuts for the FindMy app.

Solution Proposal

Here is what I did, create a shortcut on the target device:

• Raise the volume to 100%
• Play noise, an alarm sound or music
• Use iOS shortcut automations to trigger this shortcut when a message is received with a special string inside it.
• I chose ‘ringringring’

Now, when my partner’s phone receives an iMessage specifically from me, containing ‘ringringring’ the ‘play noise’ shortcut is triggered on her phone.

On the trigger device (my iPhone):

• I could not make this action a ‘single’ click, it takes me two taps.
• Create a shortcut to ‘send a message’
• Throw that shortcut onto your Home Screen or Control Centre

…and voila you can now assist your spouse trying to to find her lost device with a (relatively) swift two tap action.

(provided, of course, that you have not also misplaced your device)

Closing Thoughts

• You could remove the specification that the message must come from a particular contact, this would enable anybody to trigger the ‘Play Sound’ shortcut.
• My partner’s phone (and my one) live in a perpetual state of ‘silent’ mode, another tweak you could add to the ‘Play Sound’ shortcut would be to disable ‘silent mode’ making it possible for anybody to just call the phone and it be discoverable.