Sharing AirTags with iOS17

I was having this issue where it says the # is ineligible for sharing, and found a simple solution posted my MrL09 on Reddit. Worked for me and many others...

Here are the steps to share:

1. Select the item to share
2. In the Share AirTag screen with the contact list, hit the (+) in the top right corner
3. Search for the contact you want to share with (note: searching from the address field doesn't work. you need to search from the field you see after hitting the plus)
4. Open the contact card, and select the phone number to share with
5. Proceed to share

Order of phone numbers on the contact card seems to matter!

I think the bug is somewhere in the contacts. I still had a problem adding my daughter to a tag using this method. She had her Apple Watch cell line listed first on her contact card, and I had to remove it and make sure the iPhone was the first phone number listed. I think the sharing system might default to whatever the first number listed is, and if it's not a compatible device you will get the error, regardless of other iCloud connections.

I just updated an iPad and can confirm it worked.

I had to remove my wife from "Not Sharing". I also could not just select her name in the search, I had to hit the + then find her via Contacts (which is a terrible design in the UI). Once I selected her name in contacts, I used her AppleID email address. She has accepted all shares and can see their location now.

I can confirm, iOS 17, the share AirTag option does not work. My wife and I are both on iOS 17 stable and does not work. We've power cycled our phones and AppleID accounts.

This was the first feature we tried in iOS 17. She's been waiting for this since AirTags came out.

I've seen others try through their iPad and they say it worked. I used my phone on iOS 17 and it worked, but I had to enable Bluetooth, iCloud Keychain, and find the actual email from a contact with several that they are using for iCloud in order for the invitation to go out as expected.

With iOS 17, AirTag can be shared with up to five other people, allowing friends and family to keep track of an item in Find My. Everyone in a group will be able to see an item's location, play a sound, and use Precision Finding to help pinpoint the location of a shared AirTag when nearby

I got it to work. But needed to enable iCloud Keychain and Bluetooth. I already had my account using the two factor. I think there's also issues with the type of account you can share with. I tried to share with someone who wasn't signed in for iCloud and it didn't work until they did.

Right. I use my iPad Pro(IOS17) to share my AirTag. It says "Pending" (instead of "Not shared"). After my wife acks it at her iPhone (IOS17), she can now see my shared AirTag

Have you got an iPad you can try and share them from? I had this problem this morning trying to share an AirTag to my son. I was doing it through my phone, then I tried through my iPad Pro and it worked that way, if it works, it’ll say “pending”

After my first post, I redid our AirTag setup. I had been managing my elderly mother’s AirTags from my phone and decided to make her the owner then share them back to myself. The setup and sharing went perfectly from her iPhone SE that’s a few years old.

Also updated to iOS 17 today and I’m getting the same error. It seems like AirTag share isn’t fully enabled by Apple at this time.

One BIG thing I noticed: for some reason, when shared, Airtags seem to update much less often. Instead of "last seen 7 minutes ago" it becomes more like "Last seen 09:47" many hours ago. I have no idea if this is a bug or intentional, but as soon as I removed the sharing, the Airtag starts tracking normally again.

Do you know if the contact you’re choosing is signed in using iCloud on their iPad or iPhone with iOS 17?

I found the iCloud thing tripped me up.

Same here mate, I’m in the UK, downloaded IOS17 as soon as it was available, so 6PM yesterday, i told my son who’s 30 miles away to download and install IOS17, I’m using 13 Pro Max, he’s using the regular 13, and i get the exact same message “sharing failed, This AirTag couldn’t be shared due to an unexpected error, please remove this person and try sharing this AirTag again”

Really annoying as this was the main thing i was waiting on 😂

I also could not get it to work from my iPhone 14 Pro Max, but it did work from my iPad Pro from late 2018/early 2019. I'm disappointed the person you invite to share can't set up notifications for themself.