This article describes the indicators of a low Airtag battery. It also explains that Apple dropped the % display because it was not accurate enough (for Apple’s specs).
This happened to me as well. I got one «low battery» message for my keys and then forgot about it (or didnt see the other messages, if there were any) and weeks later I found out the AirTag has been a mere key decoration for weeks. My bad, luckily I didn’t lose anything in the timespan.
Also, I read somewhere that Apple uses Panasonic batteries, so I try to do that as well. However, my wife put Ikea batteries in her AirTags, and we didn’t notice a difference in longevity (yet).
Just ran across this product that promises to give an AirTag 10-year battery life.
I saw that mentioned on Apple Insider a week or so ago. Not a bad idea. Of course, the resulting device is much much larger, since it contains two AA-size batteries.
I’d also be concerned that alkaline batteries tend to leak when they are fully drained or get old. Leakage may damage the Air Tag. So I’d recommend using Lithium metal batteries, which generally do not leak. But doing so may subject the device to air travel restrictions, undermining one of the key use-cases for AirTags.
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I just got mine and it’s pretty slick. It’s ideal for long-term use cases, where you don’t want to hassle with changing the battery every year or so. I’m using this one in my RV trailer. For some reason that tag’s battery drains quite fast (twice a year) and it’s a pain to replace it.
This device is much larger than an AirTag (think large coin versus thick AppleTV remote) and since you remove the metal back of the AirTag to install it into the device, you’ll need to keep that someplace safe if you ever want to use the AirTag as a regular tag again. The four screws are a pain to install, but then the whole point is this lasts for years so it’s not like you need to open it often.
People on Amazon were complaining the case is “cheap plastic” but it feels solid to me and imagine it has to be plastic to allow the AirTag’s radio signals to penetrate.
Bottom line: useful if you’re tired of replacing AirTag batteries frequently.
Just to chime in with the info that there seems to be a great variance in the notification experience.
I have an AirTag in my fishing backpack. One week after coming home in the middle of October from the last fishing trip this season Find My notified me “AirTag battery is low”. I will need to replace it in the middle of April when preparing for the next season, so I ignored it. Every week now I get a reminder.
On its listing in Find My I can read “Some features aren’t available”. But this still works.
6 posts were split to a new topic: Battery-related air travel restrictions