I thought the main user can silence safety alerts on family app.
hopefully someone is testing having an air tag that isn’t theirs for three days or more so we can see how we can disable the sound off someone’s else air tag in the family.
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Family - Where are the Official Instructions About how to Add an AirTag for a Family Member?
- Thread starter Zabobon
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hopefully someone is testing having an air tag that isn’t theirs for three days or more so we can see how we can disable the sound off someone’s else air tag in the family.
it also totally ruins the ability of this to track other common household items... you could stick one on a remote, but what, is only one person in the household allowed to track it? i know apple thought about this for years and much of this has to do with privacy but at a certain point you cripple the product so much it isn't worth it anymore...
i thought that too, but it seems what you can really do is silence ALL alerts that would come to YOU. that of course would prevent the nuisance alerts from family member's airtags that you might be using, but it also would cripple the ability to monitor for a legitimate security issue with an airtag (although to be fair, that seems highly unlikely.)
Yea I don’t think anyone would steal my keys. I just want family not to get notified or get chirping if they use it for three days.
all they need to do is go into THEIR find my -> me -> item safety alerts -> off and they won't get notified or get chirping for any airtag, ever. they won't be able to see or search for the airtag if they need to find it however since it belongs to you.
Ah. This looks like it might be the answer. Thank you.
So, do you know if I disable this on my iPhone it will stop the AirTag chirping if my iPhone is out of range after three days?
Because, I've put the AirTags on other things in the house (like my backpack and spare keys that are normally kept in a cupboard) and I don't want a chorus of chirping AirTags if I am away from the house for more than three days.
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But they would need to be in my family share plan for this to work. Correct?
I’ve just realised we have separate Apple ID’s which is why you can see the Air Tag on 2 phones
and we still can’t
When a person receives the Airtag detected message there’s an opportunity to pause the alert. It can be temporary or indefinitely. I believe this would be tied to a specific AirTag unlike turning off safety alerts in the ‘Me’ tab, which is global
Okay, so I set up an airtag on my son’s tennis bag. My wife took him to tennis. Then, when she arrived home she had a notification to say that my Airtag was travelling with her. She was able to tap on the notification and set the notifications to don’t show today (I think) or indefinitely.
The notification was shown after one trip (about 20 miles in a car) With the tag attached to my son‘s bag.
The notification was shown after one trip (about 20 miles in a car) With the tag attached to my son‘s bag.
As long time Tile users who have never been really happy with them we were looking forward to replacing all our tiles and ordered 2 4 packs of AirTags. After trying them out for a day, today I processed a return and dropped them off at Fedex. Have never been so disappointed with an Apple product! If you are single and live by yourself these might work for you but for a couple or family who is mainly looking to find things misplaced around the house (our main use for the tiles . . . ) the lack of a way to assign an AirTag to multiple members of the same family or at least share the AirTag through family sharing makes these useless for us. Maybe we are just getting old but we misplace things like our various keys and wallets, glasses cases, remotes etc. all the time. Like was previously mentioned it is bonkers I can see my husband's phone, watch, computer etc. location through "Find My" and family sharing but can't see a shared set of keys. I did several experiments where I left an AirTag assigned to me in the house somewhere and tried to get it to make a sound when I was out of the house, no dice. I thought if I marked it as lost it would alert my husband's phone in the house and then he could find it, no such luck. So for our purpose these are useless. Back to the Tiles I guess. Have to return all the 3rd party holders that are yet to come as well
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Just to clarify you can share Tiles I meant to say you can't share the AirTagsAs long time Tile users who have never been really happy with them we were looking forward to replacing all our tiles and ordered 2 4 packs of AirTags. After trying them out for a day, today I processed a return and dropped them off at Fedex. Have never been so disappointed with an Apple product! If you are single and live by yourself these might work for you but for a couple or family who is mainly looking to find things misplaced around the house (our main use for the tiles . . . ) the lack of a way to assign a tile to multiple members of the same family or at least share the tile through family sharing makes these useless for us. Maybe we are just getting old but we misplace things like our various keys and wallets, glasses cases, remotes etc. all the time. Like was previously mentioned it is bonkers I can see my husband's phone, watch, computer etc. location through "Find My" and family sharing but can't see a shared set of keys. I did several experiments where I left an AirTag assigned to me in the house somewhere and tried to get it to make a sound when I was out of the house, no dice. I thought if I marked it as lost it would alert my husband's phone in the house and then he could find it, no such luck. So for our purpose these are useless. Back to the Tiles I guess. Have to return all the 3rd party holders that are yet to come as well
Pretty much agree with everyone else here. This is broken for families that want to use AirTags on shared things like keys.
I’m sure I haven’t thought through all the security implications, but it seems like a 2-way acceptance of sharing the tag through Family Sharing should be sufficient.
If I leave my phone and an AirTag in my backpack, my wife can find my phone but not my AirTag? She can find every other Apple device I own, except for the one explicitly designed to help you find things. This makes little sense.
Support was pretty off guard on this too. They said it worked like finding my wife’s iPad (it doesn’t - I can do that). Then they said it was an accessory like AirPods (I can Find My wife’s AirPods). In the end they had no good explanation.
I’ll admit I didn’t do a ton of research here. I figured it would work like everything else in Find My, but it doesn’t. I’m returning mine.
I’m sure I haven’t thought through all the security implications, but it seems like a 2-way acceptance of sharing the tag through Family Sharing should be sufficient.
If I leave my phone and an AirTag in my backpack, my wife can find my phone but not my AirTag? She can find every other Apple device I own, except for the one explicitly designed to help you find things. This makes little sense.
Support was pretty off guard on this too. They said it worked like finding my wife’s iPad (it doesn’t - I can do that). Then they said it was an accessory like AirPods (I can Find My wife’s AirPods). In the end they had no good explanation.
I’ll admit I didn’t do a ton of research here. I figured it would work like everything else in Find My, but it doesn’t. I’m returning mine.
Some reports online seemed to imply yes, however the only setting I can find ANYWHERE is in Find My -> Me -> Item Safety Alerts -> Off and that appears global, it doesn't say anything about only turning off for family AirTags.
It's beyond confusing what the behavior is supposed to be, but there are now reports the chirping does not happen if the airtag isn't also moved, so in theory if you are gone weeks it is fine so long as the airtag isn't moved. now i don't know if moved means literally touched and slightly moved or if it needs to be MOVED, ie. away from your home. I have no idea.
I’ve just realised we have separate Apple ID’s which is why you can see the Air Tag on 2 phones
In wondering since my parents dog sit. The dog would be moving with them at their house…
hopefully more tests explain this. But looks like I’ll be adding them to my family plan and turning off alerts.
Don’t want my dog freaked out by chirping and they don’t be able to turn off the chirping.
How do we raise awareness of this? Yes it’s a consumer product and yes first world problems… but this is broken for many family uses and should be simple enough for apple to fix given the location controls already available in family sharing.
are there any good tech youtubers with families where this might get more traction?
any stalking argument is bull crap when you can track (with permission) a family members iPhone.
are there any good tech youtubers with families where this might get more traction?
any stalking argument is bull crap when you can track (with permission) a family members iPhone.
Okay, so through persevering we are getting there! (Unbelievable there isn't a simple official guide from Apple to take us through these steps).
Looks like there are ways to get the AirTags to behave as I want.
Yes, the simplest solution is to share the same AppleID - which luckily I already do with my wife as we like to have a combined Photos Library (and there is no good solution to having a shared Photos Library other than having the same AppleID - but that's a topic to rant about in another thread...)
With the same AppleID we can both see all the AirTags on our iPhones and can track each other's keys etc.
Also - the AirTags all show up in the Desktop App "FindMy" so, as long as that computer is logged into the AppleID anyone in the family can use a Mac Desktop or MacBook to find things. I think that is something that has been overlooked in our discussion so far.
So, in order to see all the AitTags in one place (on iPhone, Desktop of MacBook) they need to be part of the same AppleID.
Okay, that's a summary of where we are at I think from my original question about finding a guide on how to do this.
It is ridiculously confusing - but I am sure in the next few days there will be video guides etc on YouTube as there must be many people with the same questions.
Looks like there are ways to get the AirTags to behave as I want.
I’ve just realised we have separate Apple ID’s which is why you can see the Air Tag on 2 phones
Yes, the simplest solution is to share the same AppleID - which luckily I already do with my wife as we like to have a combined Photos Library (and there is no good solution to having a shared Photos Library other than having the same AppleID - but that's a topic to rant about in another thread...)
With the same AppleID we can both see all the AirTags on our iPhones and can track each other's keys etc.
Also - the AirTags all show up in the Desktop App "FindMy" so, as long as that computer is logged into the AppleID anyone in the family can use a Mac Desktop or MacBook to find things. I think that is something that has been overlooked in our discussion so far.
So, in order to see all the AitTags in one place (on iPhone, Desktop of MacBook) they need to be part of the same AppleID.
So, I have done this on my wife's iPhone, but left it enabled on mine - as my iPhone is the primary one that the AirTags take their position from. I think this means that my wife's keys won't start beeping or sending security alerts to her when she (shock horror) drives the car without me (hey, this is almost medieval in Apple's approach marriage rights...😂)
Frome the above quote it seems it is still possible (because we haven't tested it yet) that my wife might get some other sort of Alert which she will then be given the chance to permanently disable.
This seems to be something that has got overlooked by most of us (because it is explained so confusingly by Apple) - any AirTag out of reach of my iPhone won't ever beep unless it is "moved". So, leaving a bunch of them in a cupboard at home is fine - it is only if someone, without my iPhone takes them from that cupboard to another location.
Okay, that's a summary of where we are at I think from my original question about finding a guide on how to do this.
It is ridiculously confusing - but I am sure in the next few days there will be video guides etc on YouTube as there must be many people with the same questions.
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Another vote for this being totally flawed.
I can see my wife’s location based on her watch, iPhone or iPad.
I can see my daughters iPhone or iPad.
I can’t see where my wife left the car keys which we share.
There’s zero security be benefit here when the default behaviour of a family group is sharing location.
I can see my wife’s location based on her watch, iPhone or iPad.
I can see my daughters iPhone or iPad.
I can’t see where my wife left the car keys which we share.
There’s zero security be benefit here when the default behaviour of a family group is sharing location.
Okay - so, if I were you I'd wait a bit before sending the AirTags back and going back to using Tile.
There is a really good little video with a demo of how the privacy stuff works in another thread on this Forum:
AirTag "Travelling" With Another Person - When is the Alert Generated
Wondering if anybody can further clarify exactly how the alert for an Airtag potentially tracking/following a person alert system works, or how people feel about how we believe it works at the moment. As an experiment, I gave my Airtag to my son today, while he went a walk into town for a...
forums.macrumors.com
Looks like Apple really has thought about this a lot and that some of the mechanics of it are deliberately not obvious to deter people from easily doing bad things with AirTags.
As the journalist in the above video says - she has been using Tile for ages and never thought about how they could be misused. And more importantly, looks like Tile didn't put any thought into this.
Apple has come up with a typically Apple solution. The mechanics are meant to "just work" rather than people like us pre-setting stuff.
So, the answer to my original question of where the instructions are to enable Family Sharing for the AirTag are is: there are no instructions because this setting will only appear once the Airtag has been found tracking another person. At that point that person will be given the option to effectively tell the AirTag "it's okay, this AirTag is safe, don't alert me ever again about it". And by doing it this way around they get a chance to make a decision about each AirTag that they might find on themselves.
So, I will re-enable the Item Safety Alerts on my wife's iPhone and just see how the system works in real life.
I think what suddenly struck me is that Tile didn't address any of this stuff.
Also, in my experience the Tile often didn't work at all. As teardowns and X-rays of the AirTags are showing they are a far superior product.
So, my advice is to give them a chance and see how they actually work in real life.
And in answer to the problem of which AppleID they are paired to - yes, they seem to work best if they are on the same AppleID. But as they can be viewed on a MacBook in the FindMy App - it would be possible for any member of a family to find another family member's stuff by logging into their AppleID on a MacBook.
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Aren't you missing the point here? MacBooks don't have the U1 chip (and are a bit big to lug around) so Precision Finding is out of the question. Also when I am out and about my MBA being with me is not out abnormalOkay - so, if I were you I'd wait a bit before sending the AirTags back and going back to using Tile.
There is a really good little video with a demo of how the privacy stuff works in another thread on this Forum:
AirTag "Travelling" With Another Person - When is the Alert Generated
Wondering if anybody can further clarify exactly how the alert for an Airtag potentially tracking/following a person alert system works, or how people feel about how we believe it works at the moment. As an experiment, I gave my Airtag to my son today, while he went a walk into town for a...
Looks like Apple really has thought about this a lot and that some of the mechanics of it are deliberately not obvious to deter people from easily doing bad things with AirTags.
As the journalist in the above video says - she has been using Tile for ages and never thought about how they could be misused. And more importantly, looks like Tile didn't put any thought into this.
Apple has come up with a typically Apple solution. The mechanics are meant to "just work" rather than people like us pre-setting stuff.
So, the answer to my original question of where the instructions are to enable Family Sharing for the AirTag are is: there are no instructions because this setting will only appear once the Airtag has been found tracking another person. At that point that person will be given the option to effectively tell the AirTag "it's okay, this AirTag is safe, don't alert me ever again about it". And by doing it this way around they get a chance to make a decision about each AirTag that they might find on themselves.
So, I will re-enable the Item Safety Alerts on my wife's iPhone and just see how the system works in real life.
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I think what suddenly struck me is that Tile didn't address any of this stuff.
Also, in my experience the Tile often didn't work at all. As teardowns and X-rays of the AirTags are showing they are a far superior product.
So, my advice is to give them a chance and see how they actually work in real life.
And in answer to the problem of which AppleID they are paired to - yes, they seem to work best if they are on the same AppleID. But as they can be viewed on a MacBook in the FindMy App - it would be possible for any member of a family to find another family member's stuff by logging into their AppleID on a MacBook.
Why not just login with the same AppleID on all iPhones then?
The fact that I can share to location of any iDevice (iPhone, iPad, Watch, AirPods, etc) with my wife but not the AirTags is really beyond me and completely ruins the usage case (finding our carkeys...)
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