AirTag sharing not working iOS 17

I’m on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. She is on an iPhone XS. Her iPad is the Pro 3rd gen. I tried deleting it from my account and adding it back and still getting the same error. Both devices are in iOS17. Owner of the other device had to take a call and couldn’t wait, so I continued with their iPad. Had to update the iPad.

FIX:

Made them the owner of the tag through the iPad. They finished their call when the iPad was finishing the update… Shared the tag with myself through the XS, and this time it didn’t go straight to “Not Shared” but rather it showed “Pending” and on my phone I had the Find My request to allow it. And now it works.

Additional Discussion:

I suspect that the issue is caused when someone doesn’t have all their devices updated to iOS 17. She has an iPad and iPhone. I have just an iPhone as far as mobile.

When I shared it with her, something in the backend sees that her Apple ID is used on multiple mobile OS versions and sees at least one incompatible versions, and it went straight to “Not shared”. When you share it with someone that hasn’t updated, it just says they are not eligible.

When “she” shares it with me, it sees just the one mobile OS version. I also suspect it ignores checking watchOS version 10 and just looks for iOS 17.

I was having this issue 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 was having the same issue so I spoke with Apple Support. He had me make sure phones were updated and then go back in to share the AirTag but instead of typing in the name, click the plus sign and add from there. I’m adding a pic for those who like visuals! Hope it helps!!

I had the same problem with my son's phone. I have Screen Time enabled on his phone. I turned off Content & Privacy Restrictions and was able to share the AirTag. After sharing but before he added the AirTag, I turned Content & Privacy Restrictions back on. He was still able to add the AirTag and track his device.

So here is how I got my AirTag sharing to work. First, make sure your on IOS 17.0.2 for both devices.

next, if you share the AirTag and you get an error that it cannot share, try this.

Remove the AirTag from your device and then add it back again as new. You may need to remove the battery on your AirTag in order to add back again.

Now after adding the AirTag back, share the AirTag and it should go through now.

now the second part to my problem after I did the above, I shared the AirTag but my sons phone wasn’t getting the notification and I check every notification setting. Turns out, he needed his end to end encryption setup on his Apple ID account. And then he’ll get the notifications.

the way I discovered this is I had to delete the AirTag from my device and then I tried to add the AirTag to my sons phone, when I did that, it triggered the end to end encryption setup, once that completed, my previous notifications to share the AirTag appeared on his phone.

I added the AirTag back to my phone and then I shared it to my son, he got the notifications and now it’s shared.

not sure why I had to go through all that to discover the problem and fix it, but that’s how I got it to work.

hope this helps.

After following steps it works for me:

1. update both my device and sharing device to 17.0.2
2. remove battery from airtag and then re add it back to find items in find my app
3. Share to target device following the instructions in find my (items)
4. if still showing error, go to general search reset, select reset network settings
5. after that you will see it becomes pending instead of not shared, wait for the other device to accept it

This also occurred with me.

resolved only by removing and re-adding the tags.

then it would allow sharing.

i suspect an update will address this bug in due course though disappointing that it was in the ios17 release without prior testing.

As per my instructions way back in page 1:

You need to make sure all iOS devices are on the latest iOS versions. If your targeted Apple ID shows any device on an incompatible iOS version, sharing WILL FAIL.

Once everything is updated, then go through the process of adding the item, and sharing it.

Alternatively, you can have the person with the targeted Apple ID share the item with you.

I experienced something similar. I tried removing the AirTag from my items and having my wife enter it on her phone, and she was able to share it with me. This kind of had me scratching my head, as when I moved it back under my items again, I still couldn’t share it with her. Finally, the last time I had paired it with her and try to disconnect it from my iCloud account, and I couldn’t pair it or even have either phone recognize it. I had to reset the AirTag and then pair it with my phone again. This time I was able to share it and all other items with my wife.

Only thing that worked for me was using a country code +1 for BOTH numbers. When my number did not have +1 and the other did, it wouldn’t share. When I put “+1” before my area code like the shared tag, it worked.

I think it’s an error in the software wear if both numbers don’t have matching country codes, or one has no country code, the share fails.

After I posted the above, I reviewed this thread again and found one troubleshooting step I had missed:

• Settings / Reset / Reset Network Settings

The AirTag sharing seemed to work properly after I did the following (note this was after trying all of the troubleshooting steps in my original reply, so it's unclear if this would work on its own):

• I reset Network Settings on both phones (Note this is disruptive, you will lose ALL of your remembered WiFi connections and passwords. I would avoid doing this until you know you have SSID/passwords easily accessible to get back into WiFi for home, work, etc.)
• I reconnected both phones back to my home WiFi
• I removed the AirTag from the "Me" phone (which automatically removed it from the "Other" phone).
• I added the AirTag to "Me" phone
• I shared the AirTag with the "Other" phone and accepted the share request on the "Other" phone
• At first it appeared to only partially work, on the "Other" phone, the location would show correctly as "Home" but when I went to "Play Sound" it said "AirTag Not Reachable"
• After waiting 5-10 minutes, the "Other" phone could both identify the location and play a sound on the shared AirTag
• I also added new AirTags to the "Me" phone and shared them without issue with the "Other" phone

It's unclear if any of the earlier troubleshooting steps contributed to the solution. I also reset network settings on both phones at the same time; it's possible that only one of them needed to be reset (if I had to do it again, I would reset network settings on only one phone first and see if that solved the problem).

If a reset of network settings really is the solution, this seems like a very disruptive way to fix the problem, but it did appear to work.

Had the same problem sharing an airtag with my wife.

the following worked:

1. Erased the airtag from my phone.
2. registered the airtag on my wife phone's.
3. While doing so, discovered that my wife had the "share my location" service activated on an older iphone that appears en her device list. The older iphone does not exist physically anymore as it fell to a lake. So her actual device (iphone 13 ios 17.2) asked to change the "share my location" to the current device.
4. Then shared the airtag to my iphone (iphone 11 ios 17.2) with no issues.

hope this help someone.

Hi All

I had the same issue multiple times. Finally resolved it last night.

My wife's ipad was on ipados16. this was mostly the reason. I updated the ipad to 17 and now all devices owned by both of us are 17+.

Now, it looks like the tags are shared permanently

At first I wasn’t able to share AirTag with my wife. Kept getting “Not Sharing”. I remove the share, reset network and reshared. This prompted “pending” then she accepted on her iPhone. Now we can both see the AirTag.