Using Find My for my Air Tag - What does "seen now" actually mean?

The Apple AirTag utilizes a Bluetooth beacon to transmit its location every 3-5 minutes (to preserve battery life). It also participates in the Apple Find My Network that would require an iPhone to be within Bluetooth range (~30') to receive that beacon signal. In turn, that phone would need an active Internet connection (either by wireless or by cellular) to relay that location information to the Apple servers. This is where you would "see" it on your iPhone.

If I was to venture a guess, your cat periodically re-visits your home. When it does, and the timing is right, the tag will be seen by your iPhone. In this case, the Find My app would show that the cat is near your house.

As you can see, a number of things must happen to get this location updated.

FWIW, the AirTag is not designed for tracking, either pets or people. They were designed to help you recover a lost item, like a key. However, that doesn't stop folks from using them with their pets and we see numerous posts here about the tags not working for them for this purpose.

Not sure exactly what you mean by "new" connection. The AIrTag is associated with your Apple ID. This happens when you pair it initially with your iPhone. This, to me, would be a "new" connection.

As far as, when the tag is "seen" would be what you see in the Find My app:

• Last Known - would be the last time the tag was able to get its location information to the Apple servers. This would remain in the Find My app for up to 24 hours after the tag was no longer able to communicate with an iPhone.
• A reported location - this would be when there was an iPhone (any iPhone) was within Bluetooth range of the tag, and it relayed this location to the Apple servers.

I'm not trying to discourage you from using it for tracking your cat, I just wanted to let you know its limitations. I personally tried these with both my cats & dogs. I too live in a remote location (where the closest neighbors, with iPhone, are miles away) and wanted to know how the tags would perform. At best, I found it worked better with my dogs as they tend to "come home" more often. The biggest drawback, that I found, it that they can randomly beep. My dogs found this very annoying to a point that they thought they were being punished. Again, this is just my experience. For tracking, I opted to use dedicated GPS trackers.

That's a great question, which I don't have an equivalent answer for ... but I believe the answer is what you are stating.

In order for the AirTag to receive the "Make Sound" request, it would have to be within Bluetooth range of the phone that is initiating it. This is how it is designed to work. One example is if you get a message that an AirTag (in this case not yours) in nearby. You would then send the "Make Sound" request to try to locate it.

Sorry, I don't have a better answer for you. Maybe someone else, who does, will chime in and help you out.

One thing I found helpful to help me better understand how Find My & AirTags work is the following Take Control ebook on that topic. These are easy reading and quite informative ... and quite inexpensive. I do not work for them, but have a number of their books and do, on occasion, recommend them to others.

• https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/find-my-airtags/