How to update AirTag Location

The simple answer is, you can't. Apple told me this morning that the Air Tag has to be near your device to update. That pretty much makes it useless to me. if the item is in my house I can find it without spending this extra money. I asked for a full refund and they agreed. Will be sending them back.

This is just so wrong. How can people not be able to read simple explanation?

The AirTag works exactly as designed. My son was trick-or-treating on Sunday in another neighborhood by himself why my wife was visiting with the parents of another kid who lives in that neighborhood. I stayed at home.

My son took with him his school backpack inside of which there was a Chipolo tag (a third-party AirTag, which uses the same exact iCloud feature as the Apple's AirTag). I could see the location of my sone going around that neighborhood updated every few minutes. That Chipolo tag was registered with my iPhone (which I had on me in my house), and my wife's iPhone was not in Bluetooth proximity of that Chipolo tag (as my wife was not accompanying my son during his trick-or-treating).

Therefore, every time that Chipolo tag inside my son's backpack encountered a new iPhone (of the person answering the door), the Chipolo's tag location was updated. It worked like a charm.

[Edited by Moderator] 

@twesttv You are incorrect. These tags are not meant to only update to your own phone. Coming within range of any iPhone will (should) update it. Perhaps the drive-bys were not in range long enough to get a connection and location.

Airtag update the location only if there is any IOS device near it.

I am having the same issue. I live in Ohio, USA, so it isn’t a Korea thing for me at least. I put one on each of my dogs. Today, one went missing. I have been looking for him for five hours now. I have friends and family looking too. They asked what the alert would look like if we found him, so to test it, I sent the other dog collar with my husband and a family member, both with their iPhones. They were gone 15 minutes, and I had it in lost mode with notification on, and it kept showing our home address the whole time, with the time that they left.

I am agreeing that this is not helpful. I am hoping my dog finds his way home tonight somehow, or maybe someone picked him up but didn’t call the number on his tag. If I have an AirTag on my bag, and a friend drops me at home and I forget the bag in their car, they will leave and my bag will say it is at my house with the time that they left, and I’ll never find it again, unless they find it or I remember that it was last at my house when their car was and figure it out. NOT helpful. (I was switching from Tile to AirTag, and now I am regretting that.)

I have a big problem with uploading location. I have an airtag in the car in case of theft, and as soon as the car is gone, the position is absolutely not updated, which makes the entire airtag unusable and completely useless. what is the point of having it if its only function doesn't work- locate it?

We still haven’t found our dog. 😭. He’s on cardiac medication, so I think at this point all hope is lost. I spent an hour and a half with Apple support and they couldn’t answer that either, about the frequency of updating the location. She said it certainly shouldn’t take 15 minutes. I’m looking at GPS collars for my remaining dog now.

I have a similar issue. Tracker was with a family member with an iPhone XR that had been updated to iOS 14.6 and the apple tag never updated its position during the entire 20 minute walk. The phone was set to use Find My... and I could see their phone in the and watch in "find my device" from my phone.

So after two weeks, we found our dog’s collar. We searched about 60 acres, no luck. Now we find it, dirty, clasp still closed, down by the creek behind our house where we searched a hundred times in the first week. No sign of our dog or his remains, but since the collar was closed and not open, I’m guessing the coyotes or hawks or other wildlife have separated him from his collar. Complete failure. What could have saved my dog’s life, completely failed me. I was counting on you Apple, after the tiles kept failing, I’m guessing from water exposure when my chihuahua would drink from his bowl. What a disappointment.

Also, in case anyone else wants to know, when I opened the app on Saturday, it said that the collar location was last seen on Aug 10. My dog went missing on Aug 1. So it never did send me a notification that it was found. I checked my calendar and saw I was at my son's soccer practice the last time it connected, and asked my husband where he was at that time, and only then did we go to the creek and find it, wash it, put it up to dry. About 12 hours AFTER all that, I get a notification that my dog is ‘found’. 😡😭. I am so sick about this.

Fir example, I’m looking at the Chipolo tag in my son’s backpack right now. Last time its location was updated was 45 minutes ago at his school. The teacher has an iPhone, so, I should be getting regular updates about the Chipolo tag’s location. Sometimes, the updates don’t come for hours. When my wife picks my son up, there’s only one update within a 15 minute drive home (4 miles). How are you expected to find an object along a 4-mile stretch of road if there was only one location update along the route?

I got a fitbark for my other dog, but we have the same problem with it as with all those pet trackers. It will give you an address and that is all. So I know they are somewhere on our 5 acres but not where. With our chihuahua, the whole reason I started to get the trackers was because we spent one night and about two hours looking for him, and eventually he just walked out into the living room. No idea where he was. Maybe under a bed, or under the crib, in a corner of a closet. Who knows... When you are looking for a mostly deaf dog that is 14 pounds, they can hide pretty well. That's what I liked about the tile, but they kept breaking, I think from when he would drink water / water from the dog bowl. You could get it to play the tone and when he was literally five feet from you in the garage on the other side of the van, or on the other side of a tree, or the other side of the above ground pool, or the kitchen island, or the many things that would make it difficult to see him, you could find him quickly. He didn't move fast, but quietly, and it's more difficult than you would expect to find a moving, quiet target.

That doesn’t work. If you have read any of my other posts, you would have already seen that I said that didn’t work. My dog is gone forever because it didn’t work. 11 days, about 60 acres of searches, at least 7 iPhones involved in the area, and it finally turned up amount three feet from where I was standing the first day. No idea where it was during the 11 days, because it doesn’t work.

As a test, on the first day, we marked the other dog’s tag as lost, and my husband and his cousin took it for a 15 minute drive. It never sent an alert to any phone, nor did it ever update the location, the entire drive. It just showed as being at home, where it was last connected to my phone, and counted up the minutes that I knew it was gone, until they returned home and I went to retrieve the collar from them. At that point, it connected to my phone and updated the time. It never did send an alert that it was found. It never updated location with either of their phones.

Even if they are close to someone with an iphone, and in lost mode, in my experience, it won’t update. Seven phones in the area over the course of almost two weeks, and only one update came in on ours from our dog’s collar.

We have since tried a FitBark, but that didn’t work either.

Tiles have worked the best so far, but since they aren’t waterproof, they don’t last long.

Good luck!!

I never experienced any issues with my AirTag. The location updates correctly when one of my device is near it. I did a test which I leave it in my home and disconnect all devices near it. Amazingly, it updates every few hours (probably when my neighbor’s device spots it).