How do I find my follower if and when they leave me?

When a follower mysteriously disappears, there are one of three things that have happened:

• They're dead. Sorry. If you want your stuff, you'll want to find where they died. If she was with you up to just recently, backtracking shouldn't be too difficult.

• They bugged out. This one's pretty easy to resolve: enter a new area or fast travel somewhere. They'll be right behind you.

• They went home. This is what the message refers to. Return to where you picked them up originally: in the case of Lydia, that means Breezehome (if you've purchased it) or Dragonsreach in Whiterun.

For PC, you can enter console commands (get to the console by pressing the tilde key, which is ` or ~ on your keyboard, usually under the Esc key and to the left of the 1 key):

prid <RefID>
moveto player

They get lost a lot so I do this a lot. I just memorize the RefID. Like for example, Lydia's RefID is a2c94 and Iona is a2c93

So for example, to move Iona to me, I put in:

prid a2c93
moveto player

Sometimes, you have to enter it twice. Like this:

prid a2c93
moveto player
prid a2c93
moveto player

Sometimes, they might have died. then you need to resurrect them. So do this:

resurrect
prid a2c93
moveto player

NOTE: if you resurrect them it will remove all their inventory! If they had items, it's better to go to a previous save where they have not died!

NOTE: If you press the up-arrow on your keyboard it goes to commands you typed previously. However, when you close the game then your command history is erased.

Followers will wait for you up to 3 days at the location you instructed them to.

Once your 3 days are up, you'll get the "Your follower tires of waiting and leaves" message, they will return to the location you initially "hired" them from.

In case of Housecarls, like Lydia, they will either return to the keep in their respective cities, or your home in said city (assuming you purchased one).

In case of mercenaries, they'll just return to the bar/inn/where-ever you hired them from.

Friends that become your companions return to their hometown and continue their daily NPC cycle.