iPhones with OS16 from 11 onward not reading NTAG216 NFC Card

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iPhones with OS16 from 11 onward not reading NTAG216 NFC Card

I purchased a pack of NTAG216 Vinly Cards to make digital business cards. I wrote one to import my contact information to a phone when scanned through NFC tap. It works flawlessly on every Android I've tried, but hasn't even popped up on a single iPhone. The one I was able to check was a co-worker and he's on an iPhone 11 and 13, one personal one for work, both on OS16. It didn't work. He downloaded an app called decode NFC, and when he turned on scan, the card scanned, but it gave an error message that it did not work for whatever reason. What is the issue here? Do I need to do something specific with the NFC card for iPhone? I was under the assumption that most iPhone models just had NFC and an app wasn't needed.

iPhone 12

Posted on Oct 12, 2023 5:09 PM

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Answer 1

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dannypolicarpo

Level 1

5 points

Jan 12, 2024 11:07 PM in response to Puff2Tuff

iPhone/iOS can only read NFC tags with URL data sets, the only way it can read other datasets is with a dedicated NFC app. Essentially iOS currently will happily read tags with URLs but no other datasets.

I imagine it's a security/privacy-driven reason but very frustrating when Android has no issue with openly reading other dataset types.

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Answer 2

Jan 13, 2024 8:22 AM in response to dannypolicarpo

dannypolicarpo wrote:

iPhone/iOS can only read NFC tags with URL data sets, the only way it can read other datasets is with a dedicated NFC app. Essentially iOS currently will happily read tags with URLs but no other datasets.

I imagine it's a security/privacy-driven reason but very frustrating when Android has no issue with openly reading other dataset types.

Of course, Android has very spotty security/privacy protections compared to iOS. Might there be a connection?

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Answer 3

Oct 12, 2023 5:21 PM in response to Puff2Tuff

NFC on an iPhone is limited to the Apple Wallet, except with specific approved apps. It is too easy to hack a device with unrestricted NFC.

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Answer 4

Puff2Tuff Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 12, 2023 5:25 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Yeah I followed some guides on doing it through wallet/apple pay settings, but there didn't seem to be any option. For the iPhones I was trying to have it work on, it said NFC simply came standard, and you should be able to just tap the card and a prompt should come up. It didn't do anything. I thought I read somewhere browsing Goodle about encoding and something about adding a URL, but I can't remember where I saw that or what it pertained to. Do you have a link you can share that goes into detail on that?

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Answer 5

Puff2Tuff Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 12, 2023 5:28 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I also saw something about the NFC Tag needing to be NDEF formatted to read. Not sure how to do that from the NFC Tool App on my Galaxy 23U.

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iPhones with OS16 from 11 onward not reading NTAG216 NFC Card

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