PUBLISHED ONJune 08, 2026 8:35 AMBYEriko LimA Singaporean man went on an unusual cross-island journey after his AirPods Pro case went missing, tracking its live location from Jurong to Toa Payoh in a bid to recover it.
In a TikTok video posted on Sunday (June 7), Ethan, 22, recounted how he lost the case on June 5, either at Beauty World or at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
He had bought it "only a month earlier using money from my National Service allowance".
Speaking to AsiaOne, he said he was shocked to find out that it was first located at Jurong Point.
After finding out that a replacement would cost $139, he decided to try recovering it instead.
Ethan, who lives in Serangoon, began tracking its movements through the Find My app on June 6.
Using its location history, he noticed it had travelled from Jurong Point towards Toa Payoh.
"I used Google's Gemini AI assistant to help deduce that the route matched SBS Transit service 157," he added.
When the device appeared to be near Toa Payoh Bus Interchange, Ethan spent more than 30 minutes searching the area, but it soon began moving again.
Suspecting that the person carrying it was heading back towards Jurong, Ethan boarded SBS Transit service 157 and used Apple's Find My app and the AirPods' sound alert to locate the device.
It was eventually found near a passenger, but Ethan stressed that he could not be certain whether the passenger had taken it.
Ethan claimed in his TikTok post that the person "dropped it when he saw me", adding that he suspects the AirPods case may have been tossed aside after he repeatedly triggered its pinging sound.
Instead of confronting the person, Ethan retrieved the device and considered filing a police report and requesting CCTV footage to determine what had happened, but he claimed he decided against it.
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