Unable to locate Airtags in 'Find My' app

Question

Level 1

144 points

Unable to locate Airtags in 'Find My' app

So I assumed that you could use an airtag to find where things have gone. If your car gets stolen, put an airtag in it, it will be easier to find, use it on your dogs collar it will be easy to track. But if you are out of range, then what? I thought using an Airtag would be easy, but when I open my "Find My" app, there is nothing in there pertaining to where my Airtags are. Why is this? What am I doing wrong? Can I log into the apple cloud and find it that way? Because from my iPhone (latest iOS) it still doesn't give me the ability to locate my 3 airtags I have attached to my dogs. Yes I set them up, yes I shared their tags with another family member, but being more than a mile away and still can't find seems to be a little broken to me. But yet, we see all the time that we can use these to track our luggage which could be cities away. So what is wrong here?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Finding an Airtag

Posted on Nov 10, 2025 8:54 AM

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Answer 1

Bob Timmons

Level 10

193,270 points

Nov 10, 2025 9:33 AM in response to WyldB

You do understand that the signal from an AirTag must be picked up by another iPhone or Apple computer....correct? Technically, this is called "crowd sourcing" and the more iPhones there are in the area around an AirTag, the more accurate the location of the AirTag will be displayed.

It's relatively easy and usually pretty reliable to track luggage, since there are usually a number of airport workers handling luggage, and some of them have iPhones that can pick up the signal from the AirTag.

On a recent trip to London, I could see that our bags made it before we got to the bag claim area.

If you place an AirTag on a car, it is going to be pretty much hit and miss.....probably more miss than hit....that another iPhone will be able to pick up the signal from a moving car. There is a reason why Apple does not recommend using AirTags to track a car or a pet.

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Answer 2

Nov 10, 2025 11:45 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Don’t feel bad, my wife looks for them in devices all the time. They’re in Items and I forgot to put that in my post. 🤣🤣🤣

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Answer 3

WyldB Author

Level 1

144 points

Nov 10, 2025 9:12 AM in response to WyldB

Not really looking to find where things have gone, but where things are. I thought I updated that, but it didn't update correctly when I posted the ask. I just need to understand how to locate my airtags using the airtag servers by apple.

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