An Apple Watch is usually sold as a fitness gadget with phone-like tricks, but it can also become a very small piece of search-and-rescue equipment. Apple Watch safety features such as location data, heart-rate tracking, and emergency calling can give investigators a trail when someone disappears.
That is exactly what happened in the case of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie. Her Apple Watch was left behind, but paired health data from an implanted pacemaker helped police narrow the timeline, including a point when the connection appears to have dropped at roughly 2 a.m. on February 2. It is a reminder that the best safety features are often the ones people never plan to use.
Emergency SOS can share your location fast
The most obvious lifeline is Emergency SOS. Press and hold the side button, and the watch calls local emergency services while automatically sharing your location. When the call ends, it also texts that location to your emergency contacts. That is the sort of thing you hope never to need, which is precisely why it exists.
Apple Watches have already been credited in a backcountry rescue near Stevens Pass in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, where one skier broke his leg after falling roughly 1,000 feet. Another skier used SOS from an Apple Watch, and rescue helicopters were able to find the group with heat sensors. Not bad for a device many people use mainly to close rings.
Fall Detection and Crash Detection do the nagging for you
Fall Detection is the quieter safety net. If the watch senses a hard fall and you do not respond for about a minute, it automatically calls emergency services and sends your location to your emergency contacts. If you are 55 or older, it is on by default; if you are younger, you have to switch it on yourself.
Crash Detection, available on Apple Watch Series 8 and later, works in a similar way for serious car accidents. It uses the accelerometer and gyroscope to detect severe impacts, then places the call unless you cancel within 30 seconds. Apple is not claiming superhero status here, just making the watch annoying enough to be useful.
- Emergency SOS: calls local emergency services and shares your location
- Fall Detection: auto-calls if you do not respond after a hard fall
- Crash Detection: auto-calls after severe car accidents on Series 8 and later
- Find People: shares real-time location with friends and family
Find People is the feature most families should actually use
For everyday safety, the Find People app may be the most practical feature of all. It lets you share your real-time location with friends and family, and you can set alerts so someone is notified when you arrive at or leave a specific place. In a world where a lot of tech security is just marketing gloss, this one is refreshingly plain and useful.
The bigger pattern is obvious: smartwatches are drifting from convenience tools into passive safety devices. Apple is not alone in that race, but its tight link between watch, iPhone, and emergency services gives it an edge when seconds matter. The watch will not solve every missing-person case, of course, but it can leave breadcrumbs in places where a phone might be missing, dead, or ignored.
The open question is how many people will bother turning these features on before they need them. Probably fewer than should.