House Radar, an iPhone app that helps you hunt down lost phones, earbuds, watches, TVs and speakers around the home, is free on the App Store at the time of writing. The Hong Kong site New Mobile Life reports that the usual price is US $0.99, and the App Store listing now shows the app as Free. No end date for the offer has been stated, so the price can change at any time.
What does House Radar do?
The app is listed in the Utilities category and comes from developer Peter De Paola. Its job is to find things in your house that send out a signal, then walk you to them. You open the app, pick the device you lost and start moving. The screen shifts from cold blue to hot red as you get closer, shows the words Warmer, Colder or Right here, and speeds up its beeps when you are on top of the target. When the iPhone can hear the device over Bluetooth, an arrow also points the way.
There are two more tools built in:
- Quick scan lists the devices on the Wi-Fi network you are connected to, using plain names.
- A Bluetooth view lists the earbuds, watches, speakers and trackers the phone can hear, closest first.
A newer feature, added in the version history from version 1.2, lets you search with the camera. You pick what you lost, tap the camera option and turn one slow circle while the phone listens. According to the listing, no Mac and no tags are needed for this mode.
What is the optional home base?
House Radar can also work across a whole house. The listing describes an optional free home base that runs on a Mac that stays on at home. With it, the app lists everything on your home network, flags what has just come online and shows the room for devices you place or that a listener in that room can hear. Version 1.4, which the listing shows as 23 hours old when the page was captured, adds a step by step guide called Set up your home, plus the option to use another Mac or Windows computer as a listener.
If you have no Mac, the listing says you can tap Try a demo house to see a full hunt with pretend devices. Names you give your devices follow your account to any iPhone. The developer is also candid about the limits: “Signal strength is a guide, not a tape measure.” In other words, the app ranks what is closer rather than measuring distance.
How do you get it for free?
- Open the App Store on an iPhone.
- Search for House Radar by Peter De Paola, or use the official listing linked from this story.
- Check that the price button reads Get, not a price, then download it.
The app requires iOS 17.0 or later, and the download is 9 MB. The listing also notes it can run on a Mac with an Apple M1 chip or later (macOS 14.0 or later) and on Apple Vision (visionOS 1.0 or later), though the page adds that it is not verified for macOS. The interface is in English only, and the age rating is 4+.
What are the catches?
The offer was spotted by New Mobile Life, a third party site, and the store listing is the only place to confirm the price in your own country. Apple prices and availability vary by storefront, and the source does not say which countries get the free price. Once you have downloaded the app, it stays in your account, but the sources do not say whether future updates or paid features will change that.
On privacy, the developer told Apple that the app may handle data linked to you, including email address, name, user content and a user ID, for app functionality. Apple notes this information has not been verified by Apple. The listing also says nothing connects to nearby gadgets unless you ask, and that automatic identification of nearby devices is off by default in the latest update. The app is new: the first versions appeared on October 28, and it has a single 5.0 rating at the time of writing, which is too small a sample to judge.
Is it worth downloading?
If you regularly lose earbuds, remotes or a watch indoors, a free finder that works without extra hardware is worth the few seconds it takes. Remember that Bluetooth signals carry through walls and next door, so the app is a guide to the right area, not a precise locator. It also will not help with devices that send no signal, such as a dead earbud case.
Next step: open the official App Store listing for House Radar and confirm the price in your own store before you tap Get. If it still reads Free, grab it now, because the sources give no end date.
