Free Find Air alternative to find your earbuds

Find Air helps you find earbuds and Bluetooth devices: you download it free, then the search asks for an Air Apps subscription, weekly included. Sbu Find does the same one thing, free: it guides you to the device you lost.

What Sbu Find does

Open the app and you see the devices nearby, with name, type and a ring showing signal strength. Pick yours and the hot and cold search starts: a percentage that rises as you get closer and doesn’t jump at every step, with a word beside it, from Cold to Right here.

A tick speeds up and the iPhone vibrates as you get closer, so you can search under the sofa without looking at the screen. If the earbuds are still connected, you play a sound on them that starts soft and grows.

Your devices stay at the top of the list. Turn on the alert and you get a notification when you can no longer hear one of yours, and the map shows where your iPhone was when it last heard it. The search carries on on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.

What it doesn’t do

It doesn’t find a device that is off, flat or shut in its case, and it doesn’t measure metres: Bluetooth gives signal strength, not distance. It doesn’t use Apple’s Find My network. When you need it, the app tells you to use Find My.

Why it’s free

Sbu takes the top-paid apps for simple jobs and makes a free alternative to each. Every app keeps six promises: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no account, no ads, no tracking, data only on your device. The code is public on GitHub.