Tesla brings a free update to iPhone that makes charging alerts easier to see

If you sit in the cross section of people who drive a Tesla and own an iPhone, great news! There's a new update coming to the Tesla app which is going to make it easier than ever to keep track of your charging.

The latest update adds support for Live Activities on iOS, allowing users to keep up to the minute information about the state of their charging. That includes a remaining time for the session, the current charge percentage, an estimate for the cost, the charging speed and how much energy has been added.

There is one catch, though. Currently, the feature doesn't work if you're charging at home, or using a non-Tesla Supercharger. That's going to be a slight pain point, as many users won't have constant access to infrastructure like that.

Still, it's a neat idea, and should make it easier than ever to keep an eye on the status of a charge from your phone.

New features for forgetful parents

It's not the only new feature Tesla fans can enjoy. There's also a new one coming to the car itself, which sounds like a handy addition for forgetful parents.

Called 'Child Left Alone Detection' – no, I'm not making that up – this feature is designed to stop users from accidentally leaving their children in the car. If it determines that you have, the lights will flash, an alert tone will play and a notification will be sent to your Tesla app.

Quite how often this happened to spawn an entire dedicated feature, I'm not sure, but it's a neat bit of safety. The feature will arrive on mid-2023 and later versions of the Model 3, starting in Europe and heading to other models and regions down the line.

Hopefully it's one which doesn't get used too often, though...