Losing track of car keys last month for another. Knew I had them in hand at home and retraced my steps and found them. Still, had I not found them it would have been quite inconvenient. Also, am traveling locally more, often with MBAir so I thought, hm… Maybe worth a try.
I hope it doesn’t make me lax about keeping track of stuff though. By not having these things I am forced to create routines and awareness. Knock on wood, I have only locked myself out of the house once in almost 7 years and not lost any other valuables, so awareness has worked for me, and I always try to have a backup plan for things and I strive to minimize dependence on tech.
So I’ll give it a whirl at home and upcoming trip to a trade show and see what happens.
Not going into details but I do have some worry about a tracker being planted recently, so I have also idly looked at how to detect them. I also see online that real stalkers will disable the speakers on these before planting them. Then this topic came up so I’m reading more.
I found out how many settings you have to turn on to notice a tracker traveling with you, so I did turn them on and when out and about do switch on iPhone’s Bluetooth, which otherwise remains off.
Which makes me wonder, when using a Tag, Apple or otherwise, does BT need to be continually on, or will they lose pairing and the Item start peeping etc? Or will the Item just be there, silently peeping out its BT and or other signals until I lose it and turn on BT and Find My on iPhone?
That’s the scenario I’m thinking of, plant the Tag(s) and only when I need to find them, turn on BT and Find My. Maybe that’s doing it wrong though
What settings did you need to turn on? By default, you will learn of one traveling with you.
My understanding is that the paired device pings the AirTag occasionally, probably less than once every 15 minutes, to maintain this alertness. The AirTag doesn’t have any real outbound connection capability: it broadcast. But it can receive certain inbound signals.
I would not say hundreds of meters except outside with line of site. Dozens of meters, definitely. Outside of Bluetooth range, anyone’s nearby device who wanders by will relay a signal. This is, say, how people track their pets with AirTags on their collars who wander off (and outdoor cats).
Reminds me of an incident years ago, when I was driving home in a snowstorm. I pulled over to the side of the road to break ice off of my wipers and accidentally locked myself out of the car (the engine was running). I had to wait for a passing police officer with a slim jim to get back in.
Ever since then, I have worn my spare keys (home and car) on a chain around my neck, to make sure I never get locked out again.
Other Apple devices (phones, Macs, AirPods, etc.) implement the iBeacon protocol. This is a connectionless protocol where the device periodically transmits a small amount of identifying data that a receiving device can receive and process. Any compatible devices that receive this data will forward it, along with location information, to an Apple server. This is how FindMy works with your mobile devices.
AirTags don’t use iBeacon, using a different format data packet. But the concept is similar - periodically broadcasting ID information to whoever is nearby to receive it. Compatible mobile devices (whether from Apple or otherwise) are expected to send this information along with location information to an Apple server.
In either case, the owner, running the Find My app queries Apple’s server to read the last-known location. And if it is in range of the device, it can use Bluetooth and/or UWB to help you locate its specific location.
So I don’t think it ever establishes “pairing” with anything. At least not in the Bluetooth protocol sense.
Regarding your more specific questions:
An AirTag will make a noise once every 6 hours when it is in “lost mode” if motion has been detected since the last check.
You can explicitly mark it lost via the Find My app. This will propagate to the device if someone with an iPhone (or other compatible device) comes within range.
It will automatically go to lost mode if it is away from the owner’s device for more than 3 days.
It will be transmitting its BT signals all the time, as long as the battery is installed.
Every second when near the owner’s device
Every 2 seconds when away
Updates its advertisement data every 15 minutes
Updates its Bluetooth MAC address every day at 4:00am
The expected usage is to place it inside or otherwise attach it to an object you want to track. It will always transmit its ID, and anybody with a compatible mobile device receiving that ID will compute an approximate location (from the mobile device’s location services and other data like the Bluetooth radio signal strength) and forward both to an Apple server.
This way you can find the device, even if it is nowhere near anybody’s phone. The Find My network will be able to report its last-known location - the computed location from the last time anyone with a mobile device reported its location.
Your mobile devices all participate in the Find My protocol. Any device they detect is reported to Apple.
Your phone also keeps track of what devices it has detected. If it detects a tag that you don’t own that is moving with you for an extended period of time, it will pop up an alert letting you know. You can then respond to that alert to make it chime, to assist you in finding it.
This works pretty well. It very quickly alerted me to the one my wife uses for her stuff when we drive somewhere together. (I was able to then tell the phone that I know about the tag and don’t want to be alerted about it.)
Bluetooth, Tracking Notifications, scratched my dull nugget about Find My Location access, which has 3 choices plus Precise Location option (I only recalled it being on or off) and reviewed the settings in Allow Find My to Access. I tend to turn off the majority of default settings.
OK thanks for that. I’ll probably try it both with BT on all day and selectively and see what happens.
Got it, super. I am getting more forgetful but I check frequently through the day for important stuff like keys, wallet and so on so rarely lose track of them and when I do I expect to notice within a short time and distance.
Getting a better grasp on the topic for sure. It’s way more complicated than I expected, different and specific terminologies which can trip one up (devices/items/Find My and FM Network), complications of Family groups, phew! Must have taken a lot of concentration to write the book!
Maybe my comment was vague, sorry. I thought I read that a new Tag (any manufacturer) has to be held to the device and given a name etc, that’s what I was calling ‘pairing’. The tag is then directly ah associated, or friends, with the the Device it was held to. Thereafter the Device friend would be able to find the Tag directly if within radio range of each other, without having to involve Apple Servers etc. Could very likely be I misunderstood, but am getting closer!
So no noise will occur if it hasn’t moved, regardless of the other points…?
(at self) I must admit, I’m not anymore Apple’s expected usage model… Hilarity aside, having not participated in anything but Find My for Mac, iPhone, iPad Devices over the years and now coming back to the topic, this all feels a bit icky and intrusive. I don’t expect to need to know the location of any Tag I put in use all the time, only when it (rarely) goes missing. At those times I’d like to whip out iPhone, turn on BTooth and check Find My Tag and find it. I guess that qualifies as Doing It Wrong. Maybe there is some other product for that scenario.
If you have Find My enabled in its various locations in Settings. Or can it not be disabled?
What happens on moving busses and trains, people are detecting Tags and stuff and getting notifications, the notifications give the name of the thing they detect? So thieves will see iPhone alerts for ‘Jimbob’s iPhone’ or ‘Susie’s Wallet’ etc?
Intriguing topic! Thanks for the help and I’m looking forward to learning more when I get the Tags.
Ah. Yes. You need to associate the tag with your Apple ID. It is done by holding it up to your phone, etc.
“Pairing”, however, is a very specific part of the Bluetooth protocol, where a peripheral device (e.g., headphones) exchanges encryption credentials with a host device (e.g., your computer) so they can communicate securely. See also Wikipedia.
Yeah, but how can you send it a signal to get a location if it’s missing? It doesn’t have a cellular radio, where there might be some way to communicate directly with it. And it doesn’t have GPS or any other way to know its own location. Chances are that you will be out of range when you need to get this information.
Think, for example, that you placed it in your checked luggage. If it ends up getting redirected to an airport in Stanstanistan or Upper Slobobia, you aren’t going to be able to send it a signal. But with the current design, you’ll get a location if anybody with an iPhone walks near it.
Yes, you can disable this, but unless you’ve got a good reason, I think you shouldn’t.
Find My only works because millions of mobile devices can report what they discover. If your phone doesn’t participate, you’ll still be able to track your tag (if other people are near it), but if you don’t participate, then it may hinder someone else’s ability to find his item. And if most people opt-out, the entire system stops working.
Not nearly as bad as that.
Imagine a train full of people and luggage with tags. Yes, everybody’s phone will receive the Bluetooth radio beacons. And they will report the data, along with the location, to Apple.
But the data is completely anonymous. They will report the tag’s Bluetooth address (effectively a serial number, but it changes every 24 hours), a public encryption key and its location. And that’s it.
There is no user interface where you can see any information about what it is reporting.
You can use a Bluetooth scanner utility to look for tags, but the only thing you see (I just tried it) is a non-specific “Apple Find My” device, that only transmits a public key and its battery level.
The association between that ID and what you call it is only in your Apple iCloud account, and requires the corresponding private key - which you generate when you set up the tag and is securely stored in your iCloud keychain.
Someone who physically finds a tag and taps his phone on it will be able to read its embedded NFC data. But the only information provided there is the tag’s serial number and the last four digits of the owner’s phone number. And your phone has to come within a very short distance (less than an inch) of the tag in order to read that.
Tip… Name the AirTag to include the date of turning on. Then you know roughly when to replace the battery after a year’s gone by, and even before the ‘your battery is low’ thingy appears.
The batteries are cheap enough, that swapping them out on the 1-year mark each time means you always have a working AirTag.
eg. name them: “Bike (2026.01)” = Jan 2026, “Bag (2025.12)” = Dec 2025, or similar.
OK associate, not pair. This whole topic is rife with very specific terminology that I need to learn better.
If I can’t find it myself, I would open Find My and either find it nearby or mark it as lost. Then after some time its location, relayed by Find My Network Devices passing by, would be revealed, or not?
In my scenarios I think I would almost always be within bt range. I have a fairly simple life. I haven’t traveled by air in almost 9 years and don’t expect to. I might travel soon by train but would want to keep my suitcase in sight. Which reminds me to ask, if it is a general practice these days as theft deterrance, to put a sticker or some indicator on luggage that it contains a tracking device. Suppose it depends on the thief, and I have never been one so don’t know how they think in general. (Notifying airlines of your checked bag Tag I’ve read and see its many advantages).
I have it on for the most important Devices only. Older ones with minimal data on them, used for on Device music or games, I leave it off and put them in Airplane Mode. Would be no great crisis to lose them.
I get it about the crowdsourcing aspect of the Find My Network, but Find My Device with the Network off still works for my iPhone/Mac, I had the maybe mistaken notion they communicate directly with Apple and me, not thru others. I am just not yet comfy with my Devices and Items being so widely identified. Still, I am the kind of person who will pick up a glove or other item from the snow or sidewalk and put it somewhere visible, so its owner will find it upon retracing their steps, or I return things to owners if I know them and contact neighbors about fence gates left open etc.
ok silently then, not the whole train car load of iPhones would be buzzing with Notifications.
Thanks again for the comments, I think I’m getting a better understanding about this.
Again, keep in mind that there is no direct connection between the devices.
You can do this, but you won’t get a recent location until someone else’s phone reports its location. If it’s in your home, this might not happen for a very long time.
Setting it to “lost” mode pushes your change to iCloud. The tag itself won’t know until someone with a mobile device passes close enough to relay the data. Or if it’s been away from you for three days.
Tracking tags are not a substitute for common sense. But they help out after the fact if an item gets lost or stolen.
Not that I know of. I don’t think it would help. A thief would just ransack your bag, find the tag and discard it.
I use two AirTags for two sets of my keys. I leave one set behind frequently. Tremendous help. One more AirTag in my wife’s purse. Final AirTag in RC airplanes. Lost a plane once. AirTag range was too small. Someone with Model 1 excellent eyesight brought it back to me.
I won’t quickly buy new AirTags but I might spring for one model 2 for the airplane. Existing AirTags are important part of my life.
In the Take Control book on this it says on page 13:
An AirTag’s location may be tracked via ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless and Bluetooth over inches to tens of feet (centimeters to meters) from a nearby paired iPhone or iPad;
So that makes it sound like they do communicate directly, maybe that’s where I got the idea.
It’s pretty much like a sonar-ping. It transmits data pulses every 60 ms from its antenna. Your phone, when receiving these, can compute distance and direction.
From what I’ve read so far, this looks like one-way communication, not a “connection” that could be used to send requests and get back answers.
My understanding, from Glenn’s TC book, is that any Apple iPhone, iPad or Mac that is connected to wifi/internet will anonymously report pings from Airtags, even if they do not have Find My enabled. Those with Find My enabled will also report GPS. Apparently Apple maintains a database of wifi locations so GPS is not essential for locating an Airtag.
" This broadcast is recognized by anyone’s iPhone, iPad, or Mac running
at least iOS 13/iPadOS 13 or macOS 10.15. If a device owned by another person has an internet connection, their device encrypts a package of the beacon’s name with location information obtained or inferred, and uploads it to Apple."
According to MacOtakara article https://www.macotakara.jp/Watch/entry-50407.html (in Japanese) the Precision Finding feature is not available on Apple Watch in Japan. If you try to Find, then a message “Region Not Supported for Precision Finding” appears, and the ‘Open Find Items’ button is displayed, forcing the route display via Apple Map. The feature on the Apple Watch is not fully supported yet, in Japan, it seems.
(at self) I must admit, I’m not anymore Apple’s expected usage model… Hilarity aside, having not participated in anything but Find My for Mac, iPhone, iPad Devices over the years and now coming back to the topic, this all feels a bit icky and intrusive. I don’t expect to need to know the location of any Tag I put in use all the time, only when it (rarely) goes missing. At those times I’d like to whip out iPhone, turn on BTooth and check Find My Tag and find it. I guess that qualifies as Doing It Wrong. Maybe there is some other product for that scenario.