How to update AirTag Location

I keep having issues where it says its been found, but when I check on the app, it says last seen yesterday but I just got the message that it was found now by a random iphone.

There is no way to see previous times where its been found, how its been found, location. You get one shot and thats it. Take a screenshot of the alert because you wont find it in the app I noticed.

I’m have 4 AirTag

I ask my friend who has iPhone 11 that have the latest iOS to take my AirTag to go somewhere far ….. it doesn’t update at all for some time

it will only update after long time ….. izzit suppose to be a live update since he is holding an iPhone ?

Nope.

my husband and his cousin took ours for a 15 minute drive, and it never updated. When they got home, and in range of my phone, it finally updated. Some in the thread speculate it is to prevent stalking, so once it ‘detects’ the phone once, that phone won’t send another location. Also, you can’t ‘share’ a tag with others, so you can’t have the van keys with a tag that your whole family can access. (Which you can with Tile.)

They basically don’t work.

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] 

How is it you have the only airtag that works as intended? I was playing around with another airtag the other day. It sits in my car on the road. It has told me that the location is several blocks away at times. One time It said it was in the parking lot of a closed buissinses. I thought someone stole it from my car, went out and checked and there it sat in my dash. This is not anywhere near accurate at all. If I had a lost child or lost keys or lost anything, I would be knocking on the door of lots of places in error.

Because you need to understand how the AirTag was designed to work, and not demand that it works the way you want it to work.

If you want it to work the way you want it to work, then invent your own tracking tag.

The tag sitting in the car is not going to give you any reliable location because the Bluetooth range is blocked by your car. If you want to track your car, buy a cheap Android phone and plug it in an inconspicuous place inside your car (or unplug it and hide it somewhere). You will be able to pin-point the location of your car to a foot, using the "Find my device" feature from Google. You can buy a cheap Android phone for this purpose for under $100 and get a cheap pre-paid SIM for it.

Another proof that the AirTag works as designed.

Tonight I took my dog for a 30-minute walk. She had a Chipolo One tag on he collar. We came back, had dinner, and she went to bed. I took her collar off, put it on the coffee table and two hours later realized that the Chipolo tag went on her collar anymore. I opened the Find My app on my iPhone and saw that the Chipolo tag location was reported 7 minutes ago half a mile feom

my house. Naturally, I thought it was a erroneous location, so I tried to “Play Sound” on it, but the Find My app

reported that the Chipolo One tag was too far away from the phone for the sound to be played. Then, I realized that the Chipolo One tag fell off while I was walking my dog two hours earlier.

so, I decided to go and try to find the Chipolo Tag. It was 10:45 PM and pitch dark outside. I moved the “Notify when found” slider to the “On” position and went outside. I was assuming that the location that was reported 7 minutes earlier was correct, so I was walking toward that location. Again, the location reported was half a mile away. I was holding the phone in my hand with the screen on, and as I was approaching the reported location, I got an alert on the phone that the Chipolo Tag was found. So, I figured I entered the Bluetooth range of the Chipolo one Tag. At this point, I decided to Play Sound via thé Find My app, the app tried to connect, and reported that it couldn’t play the sound. Then I put the “Notify when found” slider in the “On” position again and continued waking toward the location reported earlier. Again, I got a notification that the Chipolo One tag was found, and again when I tried to play the sound, the Find My app reported that the tag was too far away. As I hadn’t reached the location reported earlier on the map of the Find My app, I re-enabled the “Notify when found” slider, and I continued waking toward the location reported on the map earlier. I got another notification on the iPhone (for the third time) that the Chipolo One tag was found. When I tried to Play Sound for the third time, I heard the sound played by the Chipolo One tag. As the Chipolo Ome tag doesn’t have the proximity feature that the Apple AirTag does (when it directs you where the tag is with the indication in the app), I had to rely on my ears to move closer to the Chipolo One tag. Because it was late at night, with no traffic on the side road where I was, I could easily locate the Chipolo One tag using my hearing. I had to cross the street to the other side, turned the flashlight on in my phone, and found the Chipolo Tag on the grass. It was actually on the side of the road that it was located in the Find My app earlier when I realized that the tag was not on the dog collar. So, not only the location was reported correctly, but even the correct side of the road was correctly reported. In fact, it was lying in the grass EXACTLY where it had been reported on the Find My app earlier, when I was still at home, trying to locate it.

I doubt it was located by an iPhone of a passerby, as this road is off the beaten path, and there are no people waking there so late at night. I’m pretty sure it was located by an iPhone belonging to a driver of a passing car.

This proves that the AirTag or Chipolo Tag work exactly as designed.

The secret here is that the location of the tag will not be reported if the iPhone realizes that the tag moves alongside the iPhone itself, which is an anti-stalking feature.

So, if you plant the tag on your child and expect that his location on the bus will be updated regularly, it’s not going to happen because every phone on the bus will realize that the tag is moving alongside and will stop reporting the location as an anti-stalking feature.

If you put. Tag on your dog’s collar and expect to monitor the path is the dog walker whom you hired to walk

your dog via the walker’s iPhone, you are not going to get regular location updated because the walker’s iPhone will realize that the tag is moving alongside and will stop reporting the location. But, if the dog walker encounters another person with the iPhone, that iPhone will report the location.

However, if your dog runs away with a tag on its collar and it encounters people with iPhones when it’s on the loose or if it runs near the houses with iPhones inside those homes that are in Bluetooth range of the tag, you will get fairly regular location updates of your dog roaming around.

Because only Rozhasi knows how they work. Not us, not Apple, not the advertising department who rolled out the product. We all just need to *accept* how they actually work (which they don’t) instead of being angry we got scammed out of our money for a product that doesn’t work as advertised.

Apple knows how they work. Apple support people don’t know how they works if this is the first time you have called Apple support and heard something totally ridiculous from one of the support people, then you haven’t used Sople devices long enough.

if you think you got scammed, then go ahead be angry and demand a refund. Good luck to you. I guess the concept is the AirTag is too complex for an average person. I’m no longer surprised at that. The pandemic demonstrated how low the IQ is of the average person.

I’m done responding to this thread. It’s filled with a bunch of non-technical self-entitled angry people. Good luck with the rest of your life.

I think I determined what was causing mine not to update properly. By default, all of my tags had the option to not alert me when left at home. After removing all “Notify me, except at” locations, they all updated properly. I will keep tabs on it and see if the issue returns.

I don't know why it's so confusing for you. The Tag can't detect an Apple product unless its within maybe 30 feet. For example, my car was sitting on a service lot with high traffic and the tag didn't update for 48 hours. Cars driving by couldn't ping it. I drove near it and couldn't Ping it either. You have to almost walk right up on it. The range is weak! Simple as that.

"Apple knows how they work." Hilarious. When I called Apple the woman asked, "What is that?" While very nice, she hadn't been trained on it and had never heard of it. Had to read from her computer about it. hahahahahaha. They offered me a full refund with no problem so people can get one if they want. No luck needed.

@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.

Apple knows how they work. People who answer phones at Apple Support don't. I'm surprised you are surprised. It's been like this since Steve Jobs passed away. The people they hire to support the products don't use those products and have no clue how the products work. It's a rarity to encounter a knowledgeable person at the Apple Support line (especially their Level 1).