iOS 17: new Check In feature is like “text me when you get home” on steroids

No matter which end of the exchange, it’s always cute and heartwarming to see people who care about each other.

The question is, can we do even better? Because, let’s face it, people often forget to send out that text once they get home. Kids, especially, tend to “forget” about keeping their parents in the know about their well-being, which can be particularly annoying, not to mention stress-inducing.

So, here’s the deal – instead of counting on your kid (or that very absent-minded friend) to manually send you a text when they reach their destination, with iOS 17, you can make them send you a Check In message right then end there before leaving, and before they’ve had the chance to forget about it. Check In will take care of the rest!

Check In is a new iOS 17 feature that lives inside the Messages app. You can initiate it from the list of Messages apps which are found after tapping on the + sign.

Before sending out the Check In message, you have a bunch of options to choose from, such as the extent of the information you’d like to share with your relative or friend, as well as the time you expect to take you to reach your destination.

Sending a Check In message in Apple Messages

Check In is very helpful with the latter task, as it automatically calculates how long the journey will take you whether you walk, drive, or use public transport.

But what if you decide to stop by the nearby store on your way to your destination? No problem, Check In allows you to add some custom time to account for the extended journey.

As you reach your destination, Check In will automatically send out a message to the recipient to let them know you made it. This is where Apple attempts to fix the “I totally forgot about it” problem.

However, what happens if you don’t reach your destination on time or you seem to have stopped making progress? At first, Check In on your iPhone will ask you if everything is OK, but if you don’t respond to this prompt, then it’ll notify the person (or people) on the other end of the Messages conversation that something may be wrong.

A Check In prompt for the user before notifying the other party

The type of information Check In will share with your friends or relatives is relatively minimalist, but useful enough – it includes your current location and details about your battery level and network signal (also applies to your Apple Watch, if you’re wearing one).

Alternatively, you can choose to share some more details, which would then display the full route you traveled, as well as where you last unlocked your iPhone or removed your Apple Watch (in addition to current location, battery and network).

Shared information by Check In – location, route, battery level, network signal strength

And this is pretty much how Apple imagines the 2023 version of “text me when you get home.”An Apple representative has shared that this is precisely the spirit in which they imagine Check In being used: a friend going home at night after a party, or a kid getting home from school or perhaps going to visit grandma on the other end of town.

Let me tell you, if Red Riding Hood had an iOS 17-powered iPhone, Check In could have saved her so much trouble!

Seriously, though, right off the bat, Check In seems very smart and polished – the designers have obviously thought a lot about different kinds of possible scenarios and tried to make it as human-centric and practical as possible.

It’s very curious to see if Check in will reach mass adoption and become the new standard way of notifying friends and parents of successfully getting home. If this is to happen, it wouldn’t be surprising if other companies like Samsung and Google come up with their own versions of Check In in the near future.

Regardless, iPhone users should be able to take Check In for a spin (literally) this September, when iOS 17 is expected to be released officially. The list of compatible iPhones goes all the way back to the iPhone XS, which came out in 2018, so even if you have a semi-modern iPhone, chances are you’re covered!