Air Tag disappeared from FindMy app on iPhone & iPad

As you know the AirTag has a battery to provide it with power. Should that battery become depleted, it will no longer be able to send out a Bluetooth signal providing its location to either your iPhone or other iPhones within its Bluetooth range (~33'). AFAIK, that battery has about a one-year lifespan ... but, like any battery, that time can be shorter given the environmental conditions it is exposed to.

Assuming the battery is still good with this particular AirTag, it still needs to provide its Bluetooth signal to another iPhone. In turn, that iPhone must have both Bluetooth and "Find My Network" enabled on it, AND, have either a cellular or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet, to send that location information to the Apple servers. It's those servers that you can find your AirTag in the Find My app on your phone.

If you want a means to track something, without relying on the limitations of Bluetooth, you will need a dedicated GPS tracking device instead.

PS-597 wrote:

AirPods and AirTags are both devices!  Ridiculous!

Maybe, but Apple identifies their AirPods (also Mac desktops, Mac laptops, iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, Apple Watches) as "Devices," but their AirTags as "Items." ... and treat them as such in the Find My system.

[ORIGINALLY POSTED BY THAMESWAY]

This is guidance rather than a question. There's a 2021 thread on this but it's now locked. One solution given was turn off Share My Location in settings, then turn it on again. This did not work for me. What did work was turning Share My Location OFF, rebooting the phone, then turning it on again. If you do this don't forget to re-enable Send Last Location.

Then I used the Find My app (with the map), Device, + to add the AirTag. Another oddity is that while investigating all this, I was prompted in the Find My app to sign in - but was already signed in. It seems there were some Ts & Cs that needed acknowledging, once done, Find My app was working again.”

This worked for my iPhone 12 IOS 17.5 on May 4th 2024