How to update AirTag Location

Unless you forget it in someone’s car. At least with tile, when you mark it as lost, you get notified where it is. You leave your bag in your friend’s car, and you won’t ever find it because your friend has an iPhone too. It isn’t like you can even mark it as lost, and have an alert come up on your friend’s phone that there is a lost item close to their location.

So you can’t track any item you leave by or with a person with an iPhone, which rather defeats the purpose of the tag. By kids’ backpacks would never be found on the school bus, as the bus driver’s phone would always be there. So really, your better off with a luggage tag and hope someone calls you.

You can get frequent updates about the Air Tag location if thé Air Tag is encountered by other iPhones. It’s just that if they Air Tag is only encountered by one iPhone, and the iPhone detects that the Air Tag is moving geographic locations along with it, the iPhone stops updating the location of the Air Tag. But that doesn’t prevent other iPhones from reporting in the Air Tag’s location as long as they don’t move along with the AirTag.

There was always a concern that an Air Tag planted on a person with an iPhone can be used as a tracking device , whereas the same Air Tag planted on a person with an Android phone cannot be used as a tracking device. So, iPhone users would be more vulnerable to being tracked or stalked by an Air Tag than Android users. So, that’s how Apple addressed that concern. If you plant your Air Tag on an iPhone user, his iPhone will only update the Air Tag’s location as long as the Air Tag doesn’t move together with the iPhone. If the Air Tag moves together with the iPhone, the iPhone will. It report the Air Tag’s location similarly to the way that Android phone will not report the Air Tag’s location.

In other words, Apple has equalized iPhone users with Android users in that neither category of users can be tracked with an Air Tag.

When your husband walks the dog in the middle of the nowhere and encounters no one during his walk, you can simply call your husband or you can track his phone to know where he is. Ever thought of it?

If doesn’t matter if only the school bus driver has the iPhone or if some kids on the bus also have iPhones (which you have no way of knowing if they do or not). Every iPhone on that bus will detect that the AirTag you planted on your child and will cease location updates because the AirTag will be moving along the same route. This is done intentionally to prevent stalking.

The example of you having left your bag in the friend’s car is a desperate attempt to come up with a contrived scenario from the get-go. Like you already put it so eloquently, you could just call your friend. And yes, women do keep their iPhones in their purses - like 99% do. So when you mentioned your purse and your husband, I assumed you were a woman. Sorry for my uncool traditional mindset. Now I see my mistake.

Apple warned of the AirTag not being suitable for tracking pets or people from DAY ONE. The fact you didn’t notice that warning when you were buying the AirTags doesn’t change the fact that they issued that warning BEFORE they started selling the AirTag.. By the way, if your husband encounters no one on his walks, it means that the AirTag is not a good device to track ANYTHING in your area. I guess you live in the middle of nowhere, so how do you expect your AirTag’s location to be reported altogether if there are no people around with iPhones?

If you go to town and walk into a few stores, visit a coffee shop, etc. and then drive back home (with your iPhone in your pocket) and realize that you left your purse somewhere in town, you can ABSOLUTELY track the AirTag with your iPhone. Your purse will be encountered by several iPhones (wherever you left it), so you will be getting regular updates about its location. You will be able to tell where you left it, drive back to town, and retrieve it.

The fact that the second level support couldn’t tell you how AirTags were supposed to work is not an indication that it’s a faulty device. Apple phone support people are not trained well. 99% of cases I report to Apple get unresolved. They are not trained on the products they are supposed to support. They don’t own those products themselves. If Apple support was competent, we wouldn’t be here.

The fact that you were never notified of the detected tag after you placed it at n Lost Mode was a malfunction. But your dog disappeared on August 1, and the tag was detected on August 11. So, even though you didn’t get the notification on August 11, your dog was long gone by then. I’m sure, though, that if you looked at the Find My app on August 11 or 12, you would have seen that the last location update of the AirTag was August 11.

We don’t know how the collar ended up 100’ from the house. Maybe it wasn’t there before August 11. Maybe whatever ate your dog brought the collar there on August 11. Bluetooth has a very limited range, so 100’ is probably the farthest Bluetooth 5 can even reach for your iPhone to be able to detect the tag at that distance. It’s likely that your dog didn’t get attacked 100’ away from your house. Additionally, you didn’t find any remains of your dog next to the collar. So, it’s likely that the place you found the collar is NOT the same place where your dog was attacked.

You are right that Apple do NOT advertise that the AirTag’s location won’t be reported by the same iPhone if it moves alongside the iPhone. If they did, I wouldn’t have spent hours trying to explain it in this thread. I arrived at this conclusion myself after having conducted my own tests. What Apple DID advertise was that they implemented anti-stalking measures in the AirTag without going into detail on how they did it. This is typical Apple.

I already contacted Apple support with the same concern you had before I arrived at my conclusions how the AirTag prevents stalking. My call to Apple was a waste of time. I agree with you that their support is incompetent when it comes to any degree of complexity of the issue you report to them.

Trying to explain to Apple Support how the AirTag works would be a total waste of my time. I already feel that I’m wasting my life trying to explain how the AirTag works on this forum, so doing it to Apple support would be even a bigger waste of time.

There is a huge difference between Apple support and Apple engineering. Apple support is incompetent. Apple engineering is very good, but they don’t talk directly to their customers.

Tile wouldn’t have helped you in your situation with the dog either. Also, no one prevents you from putting both the AirTag and the Tile on your dog’s collar.

Even though what happened to your dog is tragic, you should take responsibility for what happened because you tried to use the wrong technology to keep track of your dog.

Get a Tile. They are far better. They ring louder, have a larger range, and you can share them with family members (not just your own personal Apple ID). They just dropped a new version that has a 400’ range. I ordered them today. The old ones, with 300’ range, were good, but don’t seem to last. (I am thinking water bowl is somehow killing them, but they have replaced three for me that failed within the year that I purchased them. The sound just stops working, but the location aspect was still working.)

These airtags were a complete waste of money! Not only are they bigger than what I had pictured, but the location of the airtags NEVER update unless im next to the airtag and have service. I put one in my car bc i notoriously forget which street i last parked my car, and i attached another one to my dog’s collar so that i can find him if he runs off and/or know where he is when a dog walker takes him on a walk instead of me, etc.

Both of my airtags have proven to be completely useless and a huge huge waste of money. If anyone has a solution, please share! I’d very much appreciate it.

I think the problem is caused by the firmware of the AirTag. Maybe the old firmware doesn’t work well with iOS 15. Check your AirTag firmware to see if it’s 1.0.291 or above. That might fix the problem.

Of course, none by Apple. Just saying. Apple does not recommend using AirTags on people or animals, just things. AirTags are not real-time trackers and should not be relied on as such.

From the comments on here, they arent suppose to work. Just look really cool. And dont forget to update them or reboot them on every IOS update or they wont work I guess.

The solution has been shared in this thread. But it takes a desire to read and understand.

Agree... same situation I faced! It's the pointless to have it, right?