Hacker News Reader

Comment by aomix | Hacker News Reader

I found the beep on lost (in this case, "lost" but not in a malicious way) tags to be pretty quiet or just not distinctive. While taking care of a friends cat with an airtag in the collar I kept thinking I was hearing a car down the block or maybe my PC was making a strange sound. Even knowing about the behavior and expecting to hear a beep I didn't pick up on it for several days.

View on HN

We have an AirTag in our dog's collar which is registered to my wife's AppleID¹ The first walk I took with the dog after she put it on the dog, I got a notification about an unidentified AirTag (which included her email address and I think phone number) following me.

⸻⸻⸻

1. My single big complaint about AirTags is that they can't be shared between Apple IDs. Presumably that will be changed in a future software upgrade. Right now, only my devices can be used to find my things and her devices her things even though we can use Find My to find each others devices.

This is my complaint too. There needs to be a way to share airtags with family members so they can also located missing items and they don’t get spammed with alerts. Without this option it’s just creating alert fatigue and will make users discredit real alerts.

There is the ability to mute notifications from particular items so I don't get an alert every time I walk the dog.

How far/long does the owner have to be away from the AirTag before it can be detected by others? I noticed my neighbor had an AirTag on his dog one day and so we tried to detect it with my Android Phone using the App and never could.

To the stalking concerns, if the AirTag doesn't think it's lost then it doesn't chirp. It also seems to remain undetectable to others. Does that mean someone could put an AirTag on someone and as long as they are close by it won't alert others?

> can't be shared between Apple IDs.

Even with Apple family? In Find My app, my partner and I can see all of each others' devices.

We can see each others devices, but not each others "Items" which AirTags are categorized under.

Well that's fucking dumb, I was going to purchase some and now I will not.

How many people will hear the beep and just ignore it? It just occurred to me that I've replaced smoke detector batteries for people who didn't know what the beeping was and had just accepted it into their lives. How many people will do the same for AirTags?

I'm the kind of neurotic person who found a loose cable harness on the underside of my fridge because the hum it made changed one day, but that's not everyone. How many people will just accept and AirTag alert as something new they have no control over?

I had the same experience when my friend hid one (with my knowledge) in my car. It took me a few days to cotton on that the beeping was the AirTag and not my car making squeaking noises of some sort. And I knew that the AirTag was there. I imagine someone unaware could fail to notice it for months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com