I've found them great for tracking luggage when travelling. And useful for finding keys in the house.

I would say yes, they are useful, BUT you cannot pretend they are a GPS. I found my e-bike which was stolen a couple of months ago.

I have tags in my airline bags. I know immediately upon turning on my phone after landing where or not the bags made it to the new location.

My work uses one to kinda track my work van. It seems to be less about surveillance and more about they know what end of towm I'm in or how far along my scheduled jobs i am. It probably isn't that accurate as they rely on apple devices to ping but i don't own any apple products so it just relies on any iphones i pass while driving

I have an airtag on my car keys and another hidden on my ebike. The latter is shared with immediate family so they can easily locate me if something goes wrong and I'm unable to contact them.

My wife has a dog boarding business, and a good number of the dogs have air tags attached to their collars. Most of the owners geofence around our home/boarding facility so that we don’t get constantly nagged by them. But when we drive one of these dogs somewhere (usually to walk/exercise them on a hiking trail etc) we often get alerts on our iPhones about unrecognized air tags that have been nearby us for a prolonged time. It will include a map showing our track and where/when the air tag was detected each time along the way.

So while I don’t use them personally I’ve seen that they do indeed work quite well. Maybe next time I travel I’ll get one for my luggage.

I keep one in my bag and it has saved me more than once. After that, I started putting them in and on everything. They are very useful.

They’re the shit. I have a hidden one on my bicycle and one on my keychain. 10/10 would buy again. (It’s worth it to spend the few extra dollars on first party trackers with Samsung/Apple btw)

I know several owners of cats that have tags. I know at least one with a proper GPS transmitter on the cat collar.

I have a Tile on my keys, it's good for finding my keys. I could live without it

I can’t say they’ve actually helped me find lost or stolen things but they’ve helped me find my keys around the house. I’ve verified they find my luggage when travelling such as when I leave it at the hotel for a day trip and my laptop bag if I have to leave it on my car.

I recently found an AirTag case that’s entirely flexible and meant to stick to the inside of a duffel bag. So far it sticks to my duffel and laptop bags, and also to my hardsided suitcase under the lining where someone may not notice it

I have one on my wallet and it helps my ADHD brain not miss the bus when I misplace my wallet. My AirPods also now have the same thing. And me or my wife can use it on our phones. It helps eliminate a lot of frantic searching.

I've got some tiles on my keys and my earbud case. I'm mostly pretty good with my keys (thy have hook hy the front door), but for the occasional time I've need to find them in a rush and they aren't where they should be the tile has been very helpful. The ear bud one I use multiple times a week, and before I had it I'd regularly waste hours searching through my clothes and bags looking for my headphones (only to find that they fallen off the table and were now in a shoe or something).

So, if you're prone to misplacing stuff they're amazing. But if you never lose stuff then I doubt they'll be very helpful.

So this video popped up 2 days ago.

An airtag / Samsung-tag comparison in traffic, going through tunnels etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61_L4lO4cUI&t=482

Honest question: why cross post to two communities on the same instance. Isn't this just splitting the comments without really inceasing exposure?

A colleague of mine put one on his cat's collar, so he can find it back when it goes outside.

Is there any variation of these that doesn't require a subscription? Even if it means it only works around th house (e.g. on wifi)?

Oh sure.

I won an airtag for free in a work raffle a few years back. Wife is the one into the apple ecosystem, and she uses it to help find her keys every once in while.

If we ever traveled by plane, I'd pick up some for our luggage, and we've joked about strapping one on our toddler.

I'm in the Android ecosystem and I bought some compatible with the Google Find My network.

I use them on my keys, inside my kids backpack (both in elementary school), one hidden inside my car, a spare that I put inside the bag I use that day when commuting (laptop bag, backpack, luggage) and another one attached to my dog's collar.

The last one ended up being useful a couple of times, I couldn't find my dog in the house and he was sleeping under our bed, and another time he was sleeping on a white blanket the kids left bunched up on the floor and he was basically invisible on it (he's all white) 🤣

I have several Tiles. Beyond helping to find where I've misplaced something in the house, I managed to lose my wallet once. I flagged it as missing on Tile and started waiting. I didn't have any high expectations as it was the dead of Canadian winter and I expected the battery to have died completely out in the cold but no I got a ping a couple days later. A short search in the area and we found it.

I have also put tiles on my bicycles and luggage in case they ever get stolen but so far this has never happened.

I have an airtag in my car, and one in my backpack.

I don't know what valuable things I would find with an airtag, but it is nice to keep track of my car and backpack

Apple airtags I found annoying and on a few rare occasions they did not work properly ...
Airtag clones, the cheap ones, never worked for me, go with originals or the more expensive clones.

The Samsung tags on the other hand have been solid and functional for me, without hassles.

I use the tags to find car keys (on rare occasions they fall from my pocket in some grass for example) they worked for luggage as well as finding a car and bike in parking areas.

For constant tracking in general I am not impressed with none of them

Airtags have four modes:

1. Locate something nearby, using UWB.
2. Leave something behind. Get notified later, when phone detects loss of signal.
3. Lose something out and about. Mesh of Apple devices can detect via iBeacon/BLE and share location to Find My network.
4. Send device a reverse signal via Find My network, to make a beep sound.

I have them on my keyfob, in my backpack and luggage, and we put one on the cat's collar in case it runs away. We've had lots of reports of missing cats and coyote sightings.

For the nearby feature to work, you have to be reasonably close. Doesn't work too well if on another floor, or you're inside and the item is outside, or in a closed metal vehicle. Lots of wandering around until it finds a thin signal. Has never worked for me.

For leaving something behind, it does send a signal, but it could be minutes later. Also, lots and lots of false positives. Tells me my backpack was left behind when it's literally on the passenger seat next to me. Used to be worse. Each time I left home without the backpack, it pinged. At least they fixed it so you can geofence home.

For the mesh signal, you need to be in an area with a few Apple devices going by -- and this is important -- during the scanning period for beacons. If any of those are not true, you won't get notified, and the remote make-noise feature won't work either.

Our cat ran out once, late at night, so not many people were walking or driving around. We started scanning. Nothing inside or outside. I jumped in the car and drove around the neighborhood, hoping to pick up a ping. Nothing. After 30m driving around, came back. Saw a pair of eyes under a car right in front of the house. Possible she wandered and came back, but cat is also a notorious chickenshit. Likely was there the whole time. No signal, no notification, no beep even though we looked out there multiple times.

Still keep the AirTags around and change the batteries, sunk costs and all. But I've sort of lost my faith in the tech.

FWIW, used to have Bluetooth-based Tiles and Ecobees. Sorry, way worse. Which is why I went with AirTags and UWB. 🤷🏻‍♂️

My mother has Alzheimer's and everything important has a tracker in it. Although as the disease progressed, we had to take away most of her important things, like wallet and keys. We still have one on the remote control, though.

I have technically used them, however not by my own volition at all.

Spent two weeks getting comments from a colleague about my consistent driving habits, being a safe driver, etc.

I thought we just shared a portion of the route there. Turns out we didn't lmao. That was a fun one.

I have a Tile on my keys, and can also ring my phone from it. The batteries have lasted years and have helped me find my keys in a parking lot, and at my house more than once.

I'm in the apple ecosystem so I've got AirTags.

I use them for:

• Vehicles - so I can find it if I go to a big venue / in case it gets stolen
• Pets - we recently had a cat in our family run away. Turns out they do that if they know they're going to pass away soon, so we don't really have closure / can give them a proper burial
• Checked luggage while travelling - If it gets lost, we can tell the airline which airport it's at to help them find it

I have ADHD; Samsung SmartTags are a lifesaver. I attach them to my most frequently used (and therefore most lost) things.

Tile, one on my keys and wallet. They've been useful a couple times but the one big problem is that I only look at the app when I need to find them and they don't send any kind of popup when the battery is dying.

So I recently found that my wallet hadn't checked in for months and the keys one was due for a change very soon when I happened to need it.

I have an Apple AirTag in my car keys and I’ve found them many of times.

It’s cool cause when you get close the UI in the app will show you how may metres away it is and which direction so you can really pinpoint them down to the centimetre.

I have the samsung ones, they are great except they only work with an internet connection. My greatest fear of switching to graphene os is not being able to use them any more, especially the AR camera feature where it shows you where the tag is has helped me a tonne at night when people are sleeping and I can't let my wallet or keys ring.

👉👈

Meshtastic

Keys, car, and a Tile for my wallet. They all work.

I've got some mototags. I just keep them in my vehicles

The closest I've used is Find My Phone and the chips in my dogs.

I was super interested in these airtag things for my dogs because the chip they put in them at the vet isn't real-time. It's basically just a barcode that gets scanned by a vet/pound. But finding out they are not pinpoint accurate, made me lose intetest. Finding out how expensive they are made me lose even more lol.

I use Tile Mate tags on my keys, backpack, and a couple of other things. I really like them.

No.

I prefer not broadcasting my and my things location 24/7