Skip to content
You never have a pen handy when you need one, do you? The second-generation Apple Pencil helped alleviate this annoyance by incorporating a magnetic charging connection to your iPad, but it’s still all too easy to lose Apple’s stylus.
A next-generation Apple Pencil 3 device may have a solution for this. A newly discovered patent describes how Apple may have found a way to include Find My functionality in its digital pen. But instead of using the same ultra-wideband U1 chips that power Find My features in other wearable devices like AirTags and AirPods, Apple is considering a different approach.
It’s thinking about making your Apple Pencil heard when it cannot be seen.
Silent alarm
Before you start imagining an Apple Pencil with its own ringtone, that’s not quite what Apple might have in mind.
According to the patent spotted by Patently Apple, the intention is to use acoustic signaling in the Apple Pencil. In a move sure to make dog lovers frown, it suggests that instead of making chimes and rings, the pencil would emit a sound that your iPad or iPhone could hear, even if your human ears can’t.
The Apple Pencil itself could house acoustic resonators in the end of the shaft, with the case milled to different thicknesses to support different resonances, and even ventilation to account for changes in air pressure when the feature is activated.
The downside here, of course, is that the pencil would have to be near your iPad or iPhone to locate it – so if you dropped it somewhere on the road between that coffee shop stop and home, you’re kind of screwed. But given that it’s most likely on the side of the couch cushions, even this little helping hand can make the difference between throwing your hands up in frustration and buying another $130 dollar pen.
As always, a patent application is not an indication that a product is in production, but instead the protection of ideas from Apple’s greatest minds. But with the Apple Pencil 3 needing a great feature should it ever replace the current model, these little conveniences would all add up.
