Can you share AirTags with family members?

Multiple accounts can not track the same AirTag. This is a problem if I want to attach an AirTag to my car keys. Only one family member can locate misplaced keys. If they're not home then the other family member is out of luck. Until (and unless) Apple changes this, I will continue to have a Tile attached to my car keys. This is a huge oversight.

Unfortunately, Apple has missed the mark with AirTags. If I have an AirTag attached to my car keys only I am able to locate the keys. My wife is out of luck if I'm not home. There needs to be an option to share the location of an item. Also, the alert tone needs to be louder.

I was very clear from the beginning that you could not share these. At least that’s how I read it. I understand the security reasons for it. That’s why tile was the other option for those who care to share.

Why not just return them to Apple?

They are associated with one Apple ID, not any particular hardware.

Family Sharing brings up an interesting question. It is possible for a person to track another person't devices if configured properly in Family Sharing. Might this not also be possible with Airtags and work in the OP's scenario? I guess we'll have to wait until the release to discover the details.

I actually upgraded my wife's phone and bought a pack of the airtags to start the process of replacing our Tile's because I wanted the enhanced wideband functionality for distance and direction. But the inability to track our keys from more than one device is an ABSOLUTE deal killer. Not only am I sending the airtags back but I'm also sending the new iphone 12 Pro back and putting her sim card back in her XR.

That is for the iphone. They don't have an entry for air tags on their feedback page. My wife bought 4 airtags yesterday and we were alarmed that both of us couldn't see them in Find my... now I find out that Apple didn't bother to enable that feature. If we had known that before purchasing, we would not have bought them. I have to say that Apple is really slipping when it comes to usability and human factors engineering. With all their money they could get things like this right if they just hired people with the right skills and got rid of any managers who make dumb decisions such as this one.

So not only is the Airtag only attached to your ID, it's also only attached to one of your devices.

So let's say you lose your handbag and the contents happens to have your iPhone. You cannot go onto Find my iPhone on your Macbook to find it. It has a section for items. But those items would be for single items assigned to that device.

I think Apple's concern not to get involved in law enforcement (they can tell them that even apple can't track it. Only the device it set up to can see it) impinges on the usefulness of their product. Now no one can track a tag without the device the item was attached to. Users want these to find their lost valuables, not have undetectable privacy.

gSe7eN wrote:

They won't allow this basic and obvious feature, but at least I get to read about 1 or 2 stories a day on Apple News about how Air Tags are being used in crime sprees across the US and used to track, assault, and sexually exploit women. The "privacy" argument at this point is a joke and a complete non sequitur. I swear Apple get more clueless every single year.

The inability to silence family members airtags actually NEGATES the whole notification system rendering it useless due to overwhelming false positives with ZERO way to tell if a notification is just another false positive or someone actually slipping an Airtag into your world.

Nope, you can’t.

Solution: buy a Tile.

It wasn't missed by QA/QE. This is an intentional limitation due to privacy concerns. If it had been an actual bug a fix would have rolled out within a week.

I can understand some people not wanting other members of their family to see their tags (I don't know why but I'm sure some would) but I do think having the ability to allow them to be selectively shared would be very useful. We got one to put on our dog's collar so if he got out or ran off while out we could track him - but only I can see that tag which makes it useless for what we wanted. Also sharing a tag could disable the tracking warnings - although that might need the other person to accept the sharing as a backup

It is extremely disappointing that there is not currently an option to share AirTags with family members. This is a very convenient feature that Tile (as well as other trackers offers). I suppose I should have looked into this before ordering them. I suppose it just seemed like such a no-brainer feature that I didn't even think to checking.

I hope this is functionality they add soon. If Tile could figure out how to do it I am sure Apple can. This is kind of a bummer.

I don’t understand the logic of your privacy argument. What is the difference between the risk of coercion in forcing someone to share the location of an Airtag (not allowed under family sharing) and the the risk of coercion in forcing someone to share the location of their phone, iPad, MacBook (all allowed under family sharing) ?

I purchased the set of 4 AirTags to be shared with my family members. I now know that I can't see my families items, but I wasn't expecting that limitation when I purchased.

Consider this a vote in support of an option to enable sharing of location with family members. Thinking through the use cases it's not a show-stopper, but it would be advantageous if it could in some of them (the use cases).

Over to you Apple!

This has absolutely nothing to do with AirTags.

You are not helpful and you are either not actually reading what the problem is or you are intentionally trying just trying to be irritating.

And every time someone calls you on it, you reply with the same non sequitur completely unrelated to the problem.

It absolutely does have to do with Airtags. Airtags are the only device that can't be located from all devices on the family account. Airtags can only be located by a single account which means a single users devices.

Users need to be able to locate their SHARED keys and other personal SHARED property which means MULTIPEL user accounts on the same FAMILY account.

Users have explained over and over again why this doesn't work for them and your suggestion which is that Airtags can be located by a single users account is EXACTLY the problem with the product.