Yes. It could partially melt and malfunction in 140+ degrees. For the time being, I am keeping mine in the glove compartment.
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Has anyone been able to successfully AirTag their car?
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$29 dollars versus $100K+. One is more practical than the other.
That’s what I was thinking of doing. Maybe if it’s not in direct sunlight it won’t be as likely to malfunction.
If you can find a material that can shield heat away from the tag without interfering with the signal that would be optimal. That way, you could place the tag on a passenger visor etc. where it possibly would track better.
I get 3 things from this thread:
* Lot of people don't have cars with Bluetooth, so Apple Maps parked car geo-location never works
* People apparently get their cars stolen enough that they want to track it, but only want to spend $29
* People are vigilantes and will hunt their stolen car down regardless of danger
If you frequently forget where you park, take a photo. It will tag it on a map and gives you visual clues, and a location.
If your car is stolen, don't be stupid. You're not going to hunt them down with an AirTag. If it's gone and not located in a few days, it's often gone to be parted out. Most of the time you won't want it back anyway. Let insurance deal with it. This is what you pay your premiums for.
* Lot of people don't have cars with Bluetooth, so Apple Maps parked car geo-location never works
* People apparently get their cars stolen enough that they want to track it, but only want to spend $29
* People are vigilantes and will hunt their stolen car down regardless of danger
If you frequently forget where you park, take a photo. It will tag it on a map and gives you visual clues, and a location.
If your car is stolen, don't be stupid. You're not going to hunt them down with an AirTag. If it's gone and not located in a few days, it's often gone to be parted out. Most of the time you won't want it back anyway. Let insurance deal with it. This is what you pay your premiums for.
Lol even on cars with CarPlay or connected service, if you go into multi-storey or underground car parks without any GPS / cell reception, even if [Apple Maps / Google Maps / whatever app came with your car] does try to record your last location when you unplug the phone / disconnect from wireless CarPlay, the location is going to be way off. Of course, we can always use the 'take a photo' method, but then what's the point of the AirTag? I've said a lot of times the only use case I find it probably useful is to find your car in a packed indoor car park where it may not be easy to locate the car just by visual clue. If the Find My app can give you a distance and direction, then it will be a great help.
But due to the very limited range of the AirTag's rather weak Bluetooth and UWB signal in a car park where there are full of metal to absorb the signals, it doesn't work in practice.
(by the way...car theft? It doesn't even come close to my mind.... where do people live where the car is so easily being stolen?)
I see a whole lot of mansplaining and patronizing attitudes in this thread but all I want is to not worry about remembering exactly which row I parked in at Costco or the mall.
And for parking garages, I have no problem remembering which floor I parked in; I just want to be pointed to the right direction.
I'm willing to gamble on a $29 AirTag that enough iPhones will cross paths with my car in a parking lot/garage to do just that. 🤞
And for parking garages, I have no problem remembering which floor I parked in; I just want to be pointed to the right direction.
I'm willing to gamble on a $29 AirTag that enough iPhones will cross paths with my car in a parking lot/garage to do just that. 🤞
Just guessing here, but since AirTags are new, everyone is going to be testing them (putting them in 'Lost' mode) as they come in. I suspect that until they become 'normal', the speed of reporting on the Find My network is going to be challenged.
AirTags are only modestly useful at the end of the day. Tile was the same. It's for lost stuff that you can mostly retrace your steps to reunite yourself with the object. The billions of beacon listeners helps increase your chances of reuniting with that lost item if it's someplace else (e.g. did the checked bag get on the wrong plane or did it never make it on the plane), but the one thing an AirTag cannot do is provide absolute certainty to Find My as to where your lost item is unless you're physically in-range.
Parking garages are actually some of the better marked facilities if they're big enough to lose a car in. If we're being honest with ourselves, a photo breadcrumb is a better trail to follow, vs. anything on a map. What's happening here is people trying to make an AirTag work in a use case that is ultimately out of design spec. Most people will find the Find My experience with tags to be immensely disappointing if they're expecting dot with 10 ft of precision.
Does your car have Bluetooth? If so, Apple Maps will get you to the right place faster.
Maps - launch maps, selected Parked Car from the suggestions, and you'll have pinpoint accuracy in an outdoor lot.
Get directions to your parked car in Maps on iPhone
In Maps on iPhone, find your parked car.
support.apple.com
Unless you're 30-50 feet away from your car, the Find function is not going to give you a nice arrow, and the dot on the Map for your item isn't going to be as precise.
They won’t do that, the bluetooth range of them is pathetic compared to cheap Bluetooth beacons off aliexpress.
and the wideband stuff only works within about 10 meters, which you would see your car by then.
any other features it has still relies on assisted GPS, which doesn’t need an airtag.
Your confidently setting yourself up for dissapointment.
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Mansplaining.. really..Kidding me.. Its called "explaining to the less tech savvy" in the real world.
Anyway.. It will sort of work for what you want.. its just not really a use case that would have been on the list. If you car is really lost, it will work the same as any other lost item.
If I wanted a device to just tell me when I am close to my car, I would get the Tile pro. It has a better BT range, and has a BT signal strength based distance indicator.
Is that just because it's remembering the last location it saw the airtag before you moved out of range?
A better test would be, switch phone off, drive to parking garage, go to hospital, then switch phone on.
So it should then first show location as being where you switched the phone off.
But as it's a car you can still probably see it by then?
Whereas The airtag would work if you forgot which garage you parked it in LOL.
How do you do this?
In the ‘Find My’ app I can see all of my family members Devices in the devices tab. But I can’t see their AirTag in the Items tab.
Why is anything like that needed, why is there such an averse feeling towards basic physics
With the caveat that I haven’t done this myself yet, I believe that you have to wait for the alert to happen the first time and then you have the option to turn off notifications from that tracker for the day or (if in a family group) indefinitely.
I don’t believe it can be done in advance of that first alert.
I found that out after testing. My 2nd post on Page 2 explains my results.
For the parked car scenario (as I also tested this), the AirTag location in Find My updates continuously in the background, so there is a dot where the device was last seen, such as when you parked your car and walked away. iPhones passing by the Tag will also transmit an updated location to Find My, which in a parking garage, will draw a circle based on triangulation accuracy unless that phone has a GPS lock.
When you go to find the AirTag, head for the location that you either: know the device should be, or where it’s showing on the Find My map, depending on the situation. Within 50-100 feet, the AirTag should connect via Bluetooth and show that you’re near it. Wander around and once you get close to it, the U1 chip comes into play and starts providing you precise location. In the parking garage scenario, it will even tell you if you’re on a different level once you get close enough. If you manage to find a place to mount AirTag under plastic on the exterior of the car (somewhere it’s protected from the elements but not where the body panels would block signal), you could ping it and possibly hear it to tell whether it’s a level up or level down from you.
As to why you would use it for this? Imagine the spouse takes the car while you’re attending to business, and when they come back, they don’t quite remember where the car is parked. This can help. If the car is moved by a third party (stolen, towed, Etc.), then having the AirTag on the vehicle can provide ”better than nothing” level of tracking so you can assist the police in the search and recovery. If you can tell them a few-block radius or which road the car is on, that is a dramatically smaller circle to search than “it was here an hour ago”. Odds of recovery go way up. In my test, it pinged 4-5 times off of passing iPhones over a 10-mile stretch, and given that only iOS 14.5 recognizes the AirTag, that number should increase by the day. As to why you’d use an AirTag over a GPS tracker, the odds of a particular car being stolen is low, and AirTag provides a very inexpensive and relatively secure way of keeping tabs on the vehicle location. Wired CarPlay also does NOT show the parked location on a map, at least for me. My phone only connects to the radio via Bluetooth if I don’t plug into CarPlay.
For clarity, the Find My network has existed since iOS 13 (it was the model used for Exposure Notifications), but 14.5 adds support for AirTag. Any iOS 13 or 14 device can be used to locate an offline MacBook for example, but only 14.5 and newer can find AirTags.
My test confirmed that the Find My network is utilized when you’re out of range, regardless of Lost Mode.
The AirTag doesn’t “know” if it’s lost or not. Lost mode sets a flag on the server side for that specific AirTag. The Lost information is stored on the Find My servers. When you tap an AirTag (you actually have to tap it hard enough to activate the accelerometer), it pops a notification that takes you to a website. That site will show whether Lost Mode is active or not. AirTags are locked by serial number if in Lost Mode, and the server will deny a re-pairing for lost AirTags.
It should work for wired just fine.
Get directions to your parked car in Maps on iPhone
In Maps on iPhone, find your parked car.
support.apple.com
It is inconsistent for some based on the search I did, but both Google Maps and Apple Maps both drop pins for me consistently.
But if folks want to make a $29 beacon work for this application, more power to them. It's extremely fussy way to do it, but also plenty of people fishing out wallets for credit cards when they're clutching their phone in one hand talking to their friend while wearing an Apple Watch on another, standing next to an Apple Pay terminal.
I'm guessing someone will come out with something that will allow you to mount an Air Tag in the wheel well of your car (won't get as hot, possibly it won't think the thief driving the car is being stalked as they're not within a few feet). Also, if you're really lazy and it takes you 3+ days to find the thing, having it outside of the car means that it's chirping when it's moving may not be audible to the thief while driving.
Duct tape would actually work.
Duct tape would actually work.