Airtag not updating location

sidra5212 wrote:

I wish I had known this before buying 4x airtags :( .

Yes, you should have done a bit more research before you purchased these AirTags for the purpose of tracking your kids.

Two things to keep in mind:

1. As mentioned by Chris_V89, an AirTag relies on Bluetooth to send it location information. It sends that information to a device (another iPhone, for example) that is participating in the "Find My Network." That signal is broadcast approximately every 5-10 mins to save on battery life. In turn, the device that receives the signal must have either a cellular or wireless connection to the Internet to pass that information to the Apple servers. That is where the Find My app on your iPhone would "see" it.
2. An Apple AirTag is not designed to track people or pets. Apple has specifically implemented a number of features to discourage using it for this purpose (at least, the people part.) Yet, folks still try, and they end up posting here thinking that this is a problem with the tags. It's not; they are working as intended by Apple.

The solution? Well if tracking is a requirement, whether it would be for a person, pet, or vehicle, then you should consider getting a device that is designed for that purpose ... one that relies on GPS, not Bluetooth, to relay location information. A perfect example of this for, let's say, vehicles is the LoJack.

Hey there sidra5212,

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities.

We'd be happy to provide you with the best information. To get started, we do want to let you know that this would likely be expected behavior. The location of the AirTags will only update when the AirTag is within range of a device in the Find My Network. If the AirTags are not within range of your iPhone or another device in the Find My Network, you would only see the last known location and timestamp.

You can find this information, and more details at this link here: Find your keys, backpack and more with AirTag – Apple Support

See your AirTag on the map

1. Open the Find My app, then tap the Items tab.

2. Choose the AirTag you want to locate in the Items list.

* If the AirTag is within range of your device or the Find My network recently detected it, you'll see it on the map. An updated location and timestamp will appear under its name.

* If the AirTag isn't within range of your device or any devices in the Find My network, you will see its last known location and timestamp. To be notified when your AirTag is within range of your device or detected by the Find My network, turn on Notify When Found under Notifications. 

We hope that's able to help.

Have a great day!

Actually this is exactly what Apple says on their website.

Get by with a  little help from  hundreds of millions of friends.

When youʼve left something far behind, like at the beach or the gym, the Find My network — hundreds of millions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices around the world — helps track down your AirTag. And itʼs designed to protect your privacy every step of the way.

so although it is not meant specifically to track a person or pet it is specifically designed to track a lost inanimate object. It’s not a huge leap to go from missing cooler to missing dog at the beach.

I put one on my dog, fully knowing it was not gps and would not be 100% reliable. However, it would be better than nothing on the chance he did run off. But it has proved to be utterly useless. If my wife walks or takes him somewhere, I can see her exact location but my dogs AirTag is maybe 20 miles away and not updating. Now let’s assume she took my car keys and not my dog it would be the same situation.

iOS 17.4.1 and iOS 16.7.7 have finally fixed the issue with devices not sending Finder Reports. AirTags / Findmy network now work like before. It took Apple only 5 months to take bug reports seriously and check the issue. Congratulations.

I might be an idiot but I realized I didn’t have location services on specifically for my ‘find my’ app. The location services were one but then when I clicked on it and looked at the find my app it wasn’t on. Everyone else has probably checked that but hoping it helps someone out:).

I think trying to remove the AirTag from your find my network and then reconnecting it could solve the problem. It worked for me.

All of Apple's "finder devices" (iPhones and iPads) that have been updated to iOS17.1 or above don't seem to be contributing to the FindMy network anymore. The network fully depends on older devices now – which are getting fewer every day (over 66% of all iPhones already have iOS17, official statistics from early February 2024).

Further researching suggests that even those devices no longer fully supported (only by security updates of iOS16 and iOS15) also suffer from this bug. My old 6s stopped working as a "finder" (reporting locations of AirTags around) after installing latest security update end of January 2024. Thus the FindMy network is getting worse and worse every day.

There are several bug reports but no response from Apple yet. Either they are not aware of it or just don't care – unless this has been made on purpose (very unlikely), they should do something about it ASAP. Otherwise, all AirTags and all certified clones get completely useless in a matter of only a few more months. The quality and accuracy of the network already is MUCH worse than last year.

I found that AirTag did not update the location information as mentioned.

When I am walking in the night market where are about 200 people around and for sure there are people using iPhone and my wife is also using an iPhone with find my network enabled, and the airtag is in the beg with her.

At some point she walked far away from me, and I try to locate her with Airtag, and the airtag did not update location for about 30 min time.

This situation doesn't seems to match the explanation given above?

I have the same problem. I used airtags (I have 8) in the last 2 years without problem, now it seems not working. When one of my devices is close to the AirTag, it updates the position, when I am far, and I am sure there is an apple device close to the airtag (my brother's iPhone), it doesn't update the position.

The scheme should be this:

1. airtag (that is paired to my iPhone, or better, to my Apple ID) uses any apple device with active bluetooth connection to "send" his position
2. apple system should forward this position to my iCloud
3. my device(s) should sincronize the position from iCloud

It seems that the point 2. is working ONLY if there is close to the AirTag one of the devices of the SAME Apple ID, and so syncronized using the same iCloud ID.

Wondering if a lot of people on this thread bought these new. I’ve been using this service since early last year and they were working fine. Leave one in each of my kids bags, drop off to school, notified left behind, location updates in find my app, and from home could get semi regular location info even seeing them move when coming home on the bus. Since I want to say Nov/Dec 2023 the behaviour has changed. They are not updating location for days or more at a time. I can literally drop the kids off and the tags will notify left behind but still show as being at home. This should not be how they work and understand why people are questioning apple products.

Hi there. I somewhat agree that I did see Find My actually did search (spinning wheel) for a tag shared with me by my wife. Then it stopped even though we were live testing it at her work where a number of iOS devices were active. I’m going to un pair and hard reset all tags. I’ll test it along with the other techniques of pairing through contacts and reset network settings. But again I are they did…something.

Latest iOS versions 17.4.1 and 16.7.7 have fixed the issue. But people need to update their iPhones before they will contribute to the FindMy network again. So it will get better the next weeks every day, if Apple doesn't f* it up again.

I found that the airtag location can be "corrupted" if it pings off an ios device with a future date set. If you change the time settings on your iPhone to 1 day forward with an airtag nearby and wait a few minutes before switching back the time, you'll notice the airtag location will no longer update until the next day. Somehow the majority of my airtags, 8+, are facing this issue and no longer update.

on latest gen - have a total of 6 as travel with work a lot and also with family. On day to day the kids have their in school back packs 1 updates semi frequently (due to being very central) the other child’s goes hours without updating. Although being still central city location. There is no commonality to issue - they are just not consistently reliable way of tracking in anywhere like realtime or even within the same 10 min. Traveling from london to paris to Atlanta to Costa Rica with 6 bags all tagged and 5 out of the 6 tags were registered still in london 3 days later. Hugely disappointed in the failure of the hardware to perform as advertised.

Utter BS have reset mine and re-paired. The Genius Bar have tried as well. I also had a battery fail after 1 month of purchase. The hardware is incapable of reliable tracking in realtime or near realtime. Updates sporadically taking an hour to days when travelling. Utterly useless in my kids school bags as location updates range from 10 mins to 10 hours.