Apple is still working on a feature that locks an iPhone automatically the moment it detects the phone has been snatched out of someone’s hand. New code inside iOS 27.2 beta 2 shows the project is very much alive, even though Apple hasn’t said a word about it publicly.
The feature first surfaced earlier this year, and it’s internally called “AutoLock.” Nothing about it is user-facing yet, but the code gives a much clearer picture of how Apple plans to tell an actual theft apart from a false alarm.
Code found in the beta shows AutoLock weighing a mix of signals to decide whether an iPhone might have been taken: a sharp burst of acceleration consistent with a snatch, a paired Apple Watch going unreachable, a paired Apple Watch losing connectivity outright, an extended loss of network connection, and the phone staying unlocked longer than a set interval.
None of those signals works alone, the code points to a voting system, where a potential theft signal requests a lock, and separate safeguards, like successful Face ID or Touch ID, familiar locations, or certain foreground app activity, can veto that request before it happens. There’s also a backoff mechanism that quiets repeated lock attempts for a while after several trigger in a row, which should stop the feature from locking a phone over and over during one bumpy commute.
One of those safeguards leans on the same idea behind Stolen Device Protection, checking whether the phone is somewhere familiar before treating a signal as a real threat.
AutoLock’s underlying service is already running in iOS 27.2 beta 2, but the part that actually locks the phone is disabled. That setup looks like Apple testing how the detection logic behaves in the real world without risking a wave of iPhones locking themselves by mistake.
There’s no confirmed timeline for when, or if, AutoLock becomes something people can actually turn on. For now, it’s a background service quietly collecting signals with nothing attached to act on them.
Our Take
Five separate signals with a veto system built in probably means that Apple got burned by false positives during internal testing, maybe locking test devices on treadmills or in gym bags more than once. Shipping the detection logic quietly in a beta, without wiring it to anything yet, is a smart way to gather real-world data before flipping the switch that actually locks someone’s phone.
