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Comment by unsnap_biceps | Hacker News Reader

It only complains once that the battery is low and never again, I've run into a dead battery when searching for an AirTag multiple times.

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This has not been my experience. I’ve had multiple AirTags notify me multiple times over a period of months that I needed to change the batteries.

So last week my keys AirTag was dead, and I checked my notifications and I only received one notification in October that it had a low battery, but to be fair, I don't know exactly when it died between October and last week.

Maybe my batteries die completely before the second notification triggers.

How do you check historic notifications?

I never dismiss them, so there's a huge pile on my phone.

Notifications can be collapsed!

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/cloudkit/cksubscri...

My ADHD brain would fall apart.

Maybe they need an option for people like you called "smoke detector mode" where it starts to annoyingly beep once a minute.

Dear god please no. The kind of people who don't notice empty batteries also don't notice the annoying beeps. But I do.

Apartment living can be hell when there are neighbours who don't replace their smoke detector batteries. I can't fathom how people can sleep through this loud annoying chirp every thirty seconds. I certainly find it hard and my apartment is far enough away that it's hard to determine where exactly the chirp is coming from.

The thought of smoke-detector like beeping of airtags all over the place gives me the worst kind of creeps. Please don't give them ideas! Please!

That's easy to fix. Just carry a pocket full of 2032s, and offer to swap out the beeping tags near you. For a small nominal fee, of course. Or just for free for the sake of humanity or just your own sanity.

Haha, sure. Or full vigilante style

I take ownership of the fact that I didn't change the battery when prompted. I only stated that in my experience it's a single notification vs the other folks saying they get notified multiple times.

Maybe you only get a second notification if you dismiss the first?

That's a fair point. I'll try to remember to dismiss next time and see.

maybe the "like you" was a little more pointed than intended but it was meant more as the royal you.

I read somewhere that the AirTag doesn’t actually know whether it’s low on battery or not. The alert is just triggered after a preprogrammed time.

This is easy to test. Just remove the battery after the warning, then put it back and check if it complains rightaway.

In my experience with different kinds of batteries, from the cheapest to the more expensive ones, the AirTag holds between 3 and 9 months until it starts warning about battery, so what you’ve read does not line up with my experience.

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