An aerosol-generating device to heat an aerosol-forming substrate configured to form an inhalable aerosol when heated, including: a cavity to removably receive an article including the substrate and an inductively heatable susceptor to heat the substrate; a DC power supply; an inductive heating arrangement connected to the power supply and to generate an alternating magnetic field within the cavity to inductively heat the susceptor in a heating operation when the article is received in the cavity; and control circuitry to generate power pulses for intermittently powering on the arrangement, measure for each power pulse a property of the arrangement, detect whether a change of the property has occurred as compared previous power pulses due to the susceptor becoming present within or absent from the cavity when the article is inserted or extracted, and detect insertion or extraction of the article in response to detecting of a change of the property.