family sharing?

[mrklaw]

how will this work?

Eg I put an airtag on my daughters keychain to replace her tile (which hasn't updated since september - good riddance). She has an iphone so will it constantly ping her that an unregistered airtag is on her? Or because she's in our family that should be ok? Or does she need to register it to her appleID

Can people share their locations for airtags like they can with their phones? Everyone can see everyone in our families phones in findmy, can you do that with airtags too? I've bought a four pack but its mainly the kids backpacks/keys I want to track

 

[KeithJenner]

Your first question is answered here:

1. If the AirTag is attached to an item you're borrowing, you can tap Pause Safety Alerts to turn off "AirTag Detected" notifications for one day. If you're borrowing an AirTag from a member of your Family Sharing group, you can turn off Safety Alerts for one day or indefinitely.

The second question, I don't think we have a definitive answer yet. I can see every device owned by my family members - phones, AirPods, iPads and Macs), but I believe that these are designated as items rather than devices so it may work differently.

 

[KeithJenner]

From another review, it states that only your own tags show up in the find my app, and doesn't mention any way that you can share the location.

I don't know how reliable that is, but it would suggest that the answer to your second question is no.

 

[mrklaw]

That’d be a shame but I’m sure we’ll see more testing when they’re out in the wild. Surely if your child/partner lost something you might want to search for it with anyone’s device - if they’re at school but the item shows it’s at home for instance

 

[KeithJenner]

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of reason for this restriction, so hopefully it will be changed in the future.

It presents a few issues that I can think of. When travelling it would be good if every person could keep an eye on all the bags rather than everyone have to look after their own.

I've also discussed precision tracking on another thread. My wife has an older phone, so couldn't precision track her tags, but it seems that I can't help her out with that either (unless I take ownership of the tag in which case she can't use the other tracking options. In fact, perhaps that is a reason why you can't share them, to encourage people in that situation to upgrade all their phones.

 

[_Spinn_]

Part of me wonders if it will even be possible though since Apple stated in their press release:

Communication with the Find My network is end-to-end encrypted so that only the owner of a device has access to its location data

That makes me think that the security Apple baked in might exclude ever being able to share AirTags. Hopefully I'm wrong and Family Sharing can be expanded to work better with AirTags in the future.

For example my wife ALWAYS takes my keys when she borrows my car (even though she has her own set). What happens if she is downtown and loses my keys? She can't use her phone to find them. I will have to go out to look for them. It would be so much easier if everyone in the Family Sharing could see each other's AirTags.

 

[KeithJenner]

Part of me wonders if it will even be possible though since Apple stated in their press release:



That makes me think that the security Apple baked in might exclude ever being able to share AirTags. Hopefully I'm wrong and Family Sharing can be expanded to work better with AirTags in the future.

For example my wife ALWAYS takes my keys when she borrows my car (even though she has her own set). What happens if she is downtown and loses my keys? She can't use her phone to find them. I will have to go out to look for them. It would be so much easier if everyone in the Family Sharing could see each other's AirTags.

I don’t think that should be an issue.

For example, AirPods use the same network, but I can still see the location of my wife’s AirPods through family sharing.

However anonymous the network itself is, at the point that the data is available to someone’s iCloud account then it could be shared from there.

Although I’m no expert on how the find my network works so I may be misunderstanding something basic.

 

[_Spinn_]

I don’t think that should be an issue.

For example, AirPods use the same network, but I can still see the location of my wife’s AirPods through family sharing.

However anonymous the network itself is, at the point that the data is available to someone’s iCloud account then it could be shared from there.

Although I’m no expert on how the find my network works so I may be misunderstanding something basic.

Yeah I’m no expert either. Hopefully it’s not an issue.

I hope I’m misreading things but Apple seems cagey when asked about Family Sharing. Their answer is to just disable alerts when borrowing an AirTag from someone else in the family. If AirTags could be properly shared with others, Apple should have made it available from the beginning or at least say it is coming in a future update.

Time will tell I guess...

 

[Howard2k]

That’d be a shame but I’m sure we’ll see more testing when they’re out in the wild. Surely if your child/partner lost something you might want to search for it with anyone’s device - if they’re at school but the item shows it’s at home for instance

You could - you just use their Find My app and sign into your account, surely? Works the same if you lose your phone, you can use someone else's phone and sign into their app with your credentials.

 

[kk200]

You could - you just use their Find My app and sign into your account, surely? Works the same if you lose your phone, you can use someone else's phone and sign into their app with your credentials.

previous,if you log another account in findmy, the login can become timeout after e.g a day. But if you login with phone’s icloud acount, it will never timeout. I don’t know if this is changed. If not, it is practice not working to share account between family member’s findmy

 

[mrklaw]

You could - you just use their Find My app and sign into your account, surely? Works the same if you lose your phone, you can use someone else's phone and sign into their app with your credentials.

I mean if we are in different locations. “Hey Dad looks like I left my keys at home, can you check for me?”

that kind of thing is probably pretty common and many families already share location of other items amongst the family sharing group so controls should already be enough, so I’m hoping that’ll just work

 

[matrix07]

That’d be a shame but I’m sure we’ll see more testing when they’re out in the wild. Surely if your child/partner lost something you might want to search for it with anyone’s device - if they’re at school but the item shows it’s at home for instance

You should register it to her phone and use her phone to search it. This share function might come in the future but for now AirTag is personal.

 

[saback]

What if...
I'm separated and my son stays a week with each parent. I put an AirTag at his school bag. Would I be able to "share" that AirTag with my ex so for the period he is with her, it will no start beeping and she will not get alerts of the rough AirTag all the time?

 

[canyonblue737]

What if...
I'm separated and my son stays a week with each parent. I put an AirTag at his school bag. Would I be able to "share" that AirTag with my ex so for the period he is with her, it will no start beeping and she will not get alerts of the rough AirTag all the time?

he can silence it but will have to do it daily when it alerts. as he i assume is no longer part of your "apple family" there is no way to tell it to permanently silence the alerts for a particular air tag.

 

[canyonblue737]

it seems the family sharing functionality is a bit disappointing, apparently in the name of security but still frustrating. i have an apple family of four: me, my wife, and our two teens. apparently we CAN PERMANENTLY silence alerts if we share devices with each other which is obviously a good thing (ie. my wife borrows my set of car keys without me there) however I really want to be able to SHARE the ability to locate airtags with my family and apparently that is not an available function, ONLY the single apple ID associated with the tag can search and locate it. The use case is for example again a set of car & house keys... we often use sets interchangeably amongst each other in my home so "my keys" (linked to my ID) might be lost when my wife is using them... if I'm at work or something it is silly for her to have to contact me to search for the keys on my iPhone, I should be able to authorize my family to share the location functionality on a per Airtag basis. these are the kind of things if Apple hears enough of an outcry they could change in software readily, they are just worried obviously about the security issues that could arrise, even in domestic family situations.

 

[Howard2k]

it seems the family sharing functionality is a bit disappointing, apparently in the name of security but still frustrating. i have an apple family of four: me, my wife, and our two teens. apparently we CAN PERMANENTLY silence alerts if we share devices with each other which is obviously a good thing (ie. my wife borrows my set of car keys without me there) however I really want to be able to SHARE the ability to locate airtags with my family and apparently that is not an available function, ONLY the single apple ID associated with the tag can search and locate it. The use case is for example again a set of car & house keys... we often use sets interchangeably amongst each other in my home so "my keys" (linked to my ID) might be lost when my wife is using them... if I'm at work or something it is silly for her to have to contact me to search for the keys on my iPhone, I should be able to authorize my family to share the location functionality on a per Airtag basis. these are the kind of things if Apple hears enough of an outcry they could change in software readily, they are just worried obviously about the security issues that could arrise, even in domestic family situations.

Does she know your iCloud password? If so, she can log into Find My with your credentials and find your items, including your keys.

 

[seinman]

Does she know your iCloud password? If so, she can log into Find My with your credentials and find your items, including your keys.

That's a ****** workaround though. I don't trust anyone on my family sharing list with my personal password.

 

[Howard2k]

That's a ****** workaround though. I don't trust anyone on my family sharing list with my personal password.

Agreed. I don’t like it either.

 

[mrklaw]

it seems the family sharing functionality is a bit disappointing, apparently in the name of security but still frustrating. i have an apple family of four: me, my wife, and our two teens. apparently we CAN PERMANENTLY silence alerts if we share devices with each other which is obviously a good thing (ie. my wife borrows my set of car keys without me there) however I really want to be able to SHARE the ability to locate airtags with my family and apparently that is not an available function, ONLY the single apple ID associated with the tag can search and locate it. The use case is for example again a set of car & house keys... we often use sets interchangeably amongst each other in my home so "my keys" (linked to my ID) might be lost when my wife is using them... if I'm at work or something it is silly for her to have to contact me to search for the keys on my iPhone, I should be able to authorize my family to share the location functionality on a per Airtag basis. these are the kind of things if Apple hears enough of an outcry they could change in software readily, they are just worried obviously about the security issues that could arrise, even in domestic family situations.

thats disappointing and stupid. Find my already let’s me find my kids iPhones or laptops. Why wouldn’t it give the option to share location for items too? It’s all controllable from family sharing so can be disabled if preferred

 

[KeithJenner]

thats disappointing and stupid. Find my already let’s me find my kids iPhones or laptops. Why wouldn’t it give the option to share location for items too? It’s all controllable from family sharing so can be disabled if preferred

Exactly what I was going to say. I don't understand why this restriction should be there, and I can't see any security risk that wouldn't also apply to other devices which are shared by default.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think it must be very likely that this is changed in future updates.

 

[canyonblue737]

Does she know your iCloud password? If so, she can log into Find My with your credentials and find your items, including your keys.

yeah she can get it if she needs it (we use a shared 1password account) so i suppose that is a system for logging into the icloud website and looking or something? i do think it hits you with the 2 factor which might bounce to my iphone? not sure. i just wish i could select airtags to be available to certain members of my family, it could be as easy as a toggle on the settings screen or something... surely there are some things that would make sense to be available to be tracked by the entire family?

 

[UnusedLoginID]

Yes, the inability to share your AirTags location within the family is a huge letdown... kind of the new M1 iMacs not being able to be used as a monitor for your M1 laptop...