AirTags on cars and people - how not to lose either of them!

Last year I wrote a long post about AirTags and how I use them and if you haven’t read it, I do recommend you to check it out and buy a set of 4 AirTags right away. You’ll thank me later! Today I’d like to focus on two niche and controversial uses of AirTags - people and cars.

Use AirTags on people you love ❤️ when traveling together!

When traveling with your family, it’s useful to put AirTags on them so if you lose sight of them, you’ll be able to find them. Of course, you have to explain it to them and ask for consent!

I found it particularly useful when we were traveling to New York City with my daughters and my parents. The cool thing about AirTags is that they don’t require any type of cellular connection or don’t incur roaming charges. They depend on people around them having iPhones connected to the Internet and there are plentiful of iPhones in NYC.

I put AirTags on all my daughters and my dad, who when sight-seeing gets sidetracked easily, so he totally needed an AirTag!

Examples of how these AirTags helped us on the trip:

• When me and my wife went to a theater and my parents went with our girls back to our apartment, I could see that they’re getting there and how far they were from home.
• When we split and decided to meet at the Apple Store 5th Ave and they weren’t there, I quickly checked that they were in Central Park and found them on a playground.
• When in the National History Museum my dad was lost, we could easily see to which section of the museum he went and there he was.

Put AirTags on cars to be able to locate them in case of theft!

Now this is also not new. My friend Piotr recovered his car thanks to an AirTag and NYPD actually advises people to get AirTags.

But there’s a trick to it. To install an AirTag in a car you have to do two things:

1. Open up an AirTag to remove its speaker, so they don’t beep when a non-car-owner drives the car. This would alert thieves.
2. Hide the AirTag on the right hand side of the car (closer to sidewalk, when parked) in a non-obvious place.

Both things are pretty easy and this video explains it very well:

Removing speakers from AirTags

If you follow the video above, you’ll see that all you have to do is open an AirTag and later using a sharp knife pry the plastic cover by sticking the knife in three key points:

Later you’ll be able to pry out the speaker using that same knife and then when you put it together, the AirTag will no longer beep:

AirTags will finally be shared in iOS17 in September!

At this point only one Apple ID can view one AirTag, which is a shame, especially in a family setup. Thankfully when the latest iOS17 ships in September together with the new iPhones, we will all be able to share our AirTags with family members.