At this point, we’ve all seen countless AirTag Reviews and AirTag Unboxing videos from the professional tech reviewers and influencers of the world, so I doubt you desperately need to see our AirTagReviews.com unboxing photos, but hey, we’re excited, and want to help walk you through the AirTags set up process.

And I must say that even after watching all the other reviews and unboxings out there, I was still “surprised and delighted” by Apple when it came to opening my AirTags four-pack (available at Amazon for $99). The whole pack of four – four of them – is no longer than a pen! AirTags are incredibly small. And they require AirTag accessories!

AirTag Outer Packaging

The outer box is classic Apple. Clean white background. Not a lot of text. Smooth, expensive feeling packaging. And the whole thing is barely longer than a ball-point pen.

AirTag Inner Packaging

After tearing open the outer packaging (like a kid at Christmas, frankly), we get the inner AirTag packaging. This is a bit superfluous, but also nice – rounded corners, small, and opens in a cool four-fold manner, as seen in the next photo.

Unfolding the AirTag Fourpack’s inner four-fold packaging

And finally, we get to the AirTags themselves. Each is individually wrapped, chrome-y and beautiful. Unwrapping each AirTag automatically starts the battery connection (thankfully AirTags batteries last a year) and immediately begins pairing your AirTag to your iPhone – just like opening a new AirPods case.

Next, a prompt pops up on your iPhone asking you if you want to Connect your AirTag

It’s actually just one prompt that pops up per AirTag, but it’s a cool, spinning 3-D graphic of an AirTag, so I wanted to show you a few different snapshots of it. They really are beautiful. Simply hit “Connect” to proceed with pairing your AirTag to your iPhone (and if you’re still wondering if your iPhone will work, check out our prior article – Does My iPhone Work With AirTags?).

After hitting “Connect,” it’s time to name your AirTag

Apple provides a list of generic names based on Apple’s guesses at most common uses for AirTags, including Backpacks, Bikes, Cameras, Handbags, Headphones, Jackets, Keys, Luggage, Umbrellas, and Wallets (for other ideas, see our list of Top 5 Creative Things to Stick AirTags To). You can also enter a custom name, as shown here.

You can then choose an Emoji – the Emoji and name show up on your Find My map

In this case, we were setting up an AirTag as a Pet Tracker so we selected a poodle emoji for our pup. But you can choose any emoji you want, of course.

After naming your AirTag and choosing an emoji, you need to pair your AirTag with your Apple ID

Fortunately, this is not a situation where you have to remember / enter your AppleID password. It just pops up your Apple ID (and contact info) and asks you to hit “Continue.”

One problem with AirTags / the Find My app so far is that it does not yet allow you to pair AirTags with multiple Apple IDs in your family. So, if I put an AirTag on my bike and my wife borrows it later, it may pop up a privacy tracking warning on her iPhone that she’s traveling with an unknown AirTag! It’s not unknown! Same problem if you put AirTags on dog collars – someone else walking your dogs might get privacy warnings about the AirTags being with them. Apple needs to allow AirTags to be paired to multiple user accounts, like Tile does (see our Tile vs. AirTags comparison). But, that gripe aside, setting up AirTags is absolutely painless.

Then, sit back and wait 10-20 seconds (it’s really quick) for your AirTag setup process to finish

How long does it take to set up and pair Apple AirTags to an iPhone? I timed it to take just about a minute from start to finish. It’s very fast.

Now, your AirTag is connected to your iPhone and you see yourself on the Find My map

Here we see our AirTag on the map in the Find My app for the first time, with the name and emoji we selected. My dog Vino is even cuter than the emoji makes him out to be.

And that’s it! My AirTag is paired with my iPhone in under a minute, and I’ll never lose anything ever again. I just have to keep buying those AirTags four-packs and put them on everything I own… Thanks Apple!

Top 5 Items to Find with AirTags:

• 1) Using AirTags to find your lost Suitcase / Checked Bag when Traveling
  • How many times has this happened to you? You stay up late the night before your big trip to finish packing, you jam in every last item you may or may not need based on whatever weather and activities you may or may not experience… you board your flight to paradise, you try your best to sleep but end up watching some terrible movie instead, while picking through a TV-dinner tray of unidentifiable-potato-gravy-meat(?) and inexplicably dry salad… you land, exhausted, and stand around Luggage Carousal #3 for 20 minutes waiting for the first bag to less-than-gracefully fall into place and slowly make its way around the loop. It’s not your bag.
  • You then wait some more, as the conveyor belt fills up, jockeying for position amongst the crowds of other weary travelers from your flight, still cautiously optimistic your bag will be in the same city / country as you.
  • And… Nothing.
  • Crowd is starting to disperse, and you slowly fill with dread and try to cling to hope as the last couple bags arrive. Your bag will make it… right? How can an airline lose a suitcase in the 21st century? Did they really just ship it to Europe when you flew to South America? Losing a bag while traveling… Is. The. Worst. Maybe it just ended up on a different conveyor belt somehow? Maybe it’s in the airport but running a bit late?
  • The solution? Open your Find My app, and track your suitcase with precision. The airline’s going to love when you tell them exactly where it is! Well, maybe they won’t say “thank you” in so many words, but at least you’ll know where your bag is. Thank you AirTags!
• 2) Clipping an AirTag to your Pet’s Collar to Ensure you Don’t Lose your Dog or Cat
  • My good friend Andrea recently lost her cat, Marco. She had Marco and his brother for 5 years and he never once tried to bolt out the door, until this March… Maybe Marco was sick of being stuck in doors so much due to lockdown? We’re not sure.
  • Marco bolted out the door and into the cool evening air during an Uber Eats delivery, and immediately disappeared out of site. Black cat at sunset in a big city. It was horrible, terrifying, and all-to-common. Andrea was devastated. (Spoiler alert, she put up roughly 200 signs and ultimately a neighbor found Marco – two days later – camped out under the neighbor’s deck a couple blocks over. He was safe and sound and probably feasting on wildlife)
  • How would an Apple AirTag help you find your lost cat? Well, for $29, Marco is going to have an AirTag on his collar next time – and he’ll be extremely easy to find with the Find My network. Andrea won’t have to print 200 flyers and wait / pray for a neighbor to call – she’ll know right away that Marco is out doing some hunting under a neighbor’s house, and the Find My app will walk her right over with AR-based turn-by-turn directions. Pretty good pet insurance policy.
  • See our article – Are AirTags Good Pet Trackers?
• 3) Using an AirTag to Find your Keys
  • This seems so obvious it’s almost boring, but it has to be on here… when you’re rushing out to work or school and you can’t find your keys… Ugh…
  • Attach an AirTag to your keychain, and you have some easy options. Use the Find My app to make your keys sound an audible chime / beep (great if they fell behind the counter instead of being on the counter, where you thought you left them), or even use the indoor-GPS-features of the U1 ultra-wideband chip to get turn-by-turn directions to the toy-box-under-the-tiny-desk-your-daughter-uses-which-she-thought-would-be-a-clever-place-to-hide-mommy’s-keys-today. Not a literal life-saver like using an AirTag as a Pet Tracker, but pretty amazing nonetheless.
• 4) Using AirTags to Find your Car or Bike Parking Spot
  • OK, you might be saying you don’t lose your car – how hard is it to remember where you parked?
  • Well, last year (pre-covid) I flew from LAX to JFK on American on a last-minute business trip, and had to park in one of the airport structures. It was supposed to be a one-day trip for a meeting, in and out. Of course, traffic was awful and I was running late – I barely had time to park, and run to the gate to make my flight (and therefore, make it to tomorrow’s meeting on time).
  • Of course, flying back, there were unexpected weather-related cancelations and schedule changes. I ended up having to switch flights last minute, and was routed through a different city instead flying direct… Which meant, when I landed (late at night, exhausted, after a terrible 5,000-mile-in-20-hours-roundtrip), I was at a different LAX terminal than I departed from. I suddenly realized it was dark, I’d never been here before, and I had no idea where my car was.
  • After a 20-minute late-night walk through LAX, and somewhat deliriously tired, I clung to my wavering hope that at least I knew I parked on level 3. I mean, I think I parked on level 3? But what structure? This isn’t where I flew out of, and these parking structures sure do look the same.
  • Have you ever tried to find your car at a place like LAX when you don’t know the level you parked on, never-mind the structure?
  • I would have paid so much more than $29 for an AirTag to be in my cupholder as the clock ticked past midnight and I still hadn’t found my car. I wanted to cry… WHERE WAS MY CAR?
  • Lesson learned. I’m keeping an AirTag in my glove compartment of my car from now on. Sure it would be cool one day to smugly tell the police where my car is in the off-chance it gets stolen, but really, I know why I keep an AirTag in my car at all times. It’s because I never want to forget my parking spot again. LAX isn’t going to win so easily next time.
• 5) Using an AirTag to find your kid
  • I can already see the onslaught of complaints about this one, so I’ll caveat that I’m not suggesting we track our kids every day / I’d only do this if we were going to Disneyland or a waterpark (Are AirTags Waterproof?) or something… But, let’s be honest. Why wouldn’t you slip an AirTag in the pocket of your toddler’s tiny jeans for the day? Does that make me sound like an overly paranoid parent? Maybe, but it’s also a $25-$30 insurance policy to prevent a parental heart-attack. Let’s say you’re trying to quickly order a $19 bottle of water from the “guest experience partner”, when he starts to up-sell you to a “collectible water bottle” with a plastic princess stuck on the top for only $12 more. While this unnecessarily complicated water bottle transaction is taking place, little Timmy spots an awesome butterfly and starts to follow her through the crowds. Yeah, compared to the money I’m spending on water bottles, I think sticking an AirTag on my kid is a relatively cheap and unobtrusive way to relax a bit on the next family vacation.

Apple released their soon-to-be-iconic AirTag trackers today. They have everything we have predicted in our countless AirTag rumors and our AirTag FAQ has already been updated to reflect all the details of today’s latest and greatest news.

Sign up to the right for our (no-spam) AirTag Deal Alerts email list, which will track all the latest AirTag deals as they come!

Key AirTag Features:

• AirTag uses Apple’s vast, global Find My network of iPhone and iPad users to help locate a lost item
• Location data remains private and anonymous with end-to-end encryption
• Launches / Available for order beginning Friday, April 30 at 5 a.m. PT
• One AirTag costs $29, and a four-pack of AirTags is available for a discounted price of $99
• Makes one heck-of-a Pet Tracker

What is Apple AirTag’s “Precision Finding”? How does the U1 Ultra-Wideband chip help you find your stuff?

• AirTag enables Apple’s “Precision Finding” system by using its proprietary “indoor GPS” U1 Ultra Wideband chip to help direct you to the exact location of whatever you attached AirTag to, instead of relying on just a simple beeping system like AirTag competitors from Samsung and Tile
• Precision Finding helps you more accurately determine the distance and direction to a lost AirTag when it is in range. As you walk or drive with your iPhone or iPad in-hand, Precision Finding fuses input from the camera, ARKit, accelerometer, and gyroscope, to help guide you to AirTag using a combination of sound, haptics, and visual feedback… So you can be inside your house, and it can help you turn left, right and go straight, tell you whether you’re getting hotter or colder, and then take you to that long-lost set of car keys, quickly.

So, how do you find your lost items with Apple AirTag trackers?

• Are you worried about losing an important item (or furry friend – see article on Are Apple AirTags Good Pet Trackers?), well then the first thing to do is to attach an AirTag to it!
• Then, you simply use the Find My app, which is built into every iPhone, iPad and Mac, to help find your lost item & AirTag (just like you’ve used the Find My App in the past to track down your lost iPhones)
• If the AirTag and your precious cargo are in Bluetooth range (e.g., in the the house), it will lead you right to it (oh look, the remote is under the couch… again)
• But, if your item and the AirTag is separated from its owner and out of Bluetooth range (e.g., if Fido ran away!) then you’ll rely on Apple’s nearly-billion-strong network of other iPhone / iPad / Apple Watch users… This is called the “Find My network” and it will help you help track your missing AirTag down
• Apple notes that “the Find My network is approaching a billion Apple devices and can detect Bluetooth signals from a lost AirTag and relay the location back to its owner, all in the background, anonymously and privately”
• Lost something? Simply open your Find My app and place your AirTag into “Lost Mode” – and you’ll (quickly) be notified when it is in range of anyone in the world with a modern iPhone or iPad, as they are the ones who comprise the Find My network
• Imagine – Fido is bound to be chewing on a bone down the street… but what street is he on, and what if he’s hiding behind a bush? Well, if he’s within 300′ or so of any random stranger with an iPhone – their phone will find him, and anonymously let you know exactly where he’s hiding. That’s. Freaking. Amazing. Welcome home Fido, and thank you AirTags!
• Did you find someone’s lost device with an AirTag on it, and want their hero / new BFF? You can help them find it! Simply tap it with your iPhone or any NFC-capable device and you will be taken to a website that will display a contact phone number for the owner, if they have provided one, and help them get it back quickly! I found someone’s locked iPhone on the street the other day, and it was much harder to return than it should have been… I had to keep it charged for hours until a friend of theirs called to ask where it was. Things should be easier to find and return, and with AirTags, now they are.

That sounds amazing… But, what about privacy? Can someone hide an AirTag in my car and spy on me and track me around the world? Do I need to be creeped out by stalkers with AirTags?

• Maybe… But Apple has thought this through, so AirTag has privacy built-in from launch
• First off, you don’t need to worry about Apple or some government entity finding and following you using your own AirTag trackers. Apple boasts that AirTag is designed to keep location data private and secure, as there is “no location data or location history physically stored inside AirTag.” So, check creepy hacking off your list.
• Further, “communication with the Find My network is end-to-end encrypted so that only the owner of a device has access to its location data, and no one, including Apple, knows the identity or location of any device that helped find it.”

That’s nerdy and reassuring… But that doesn’t stop my angry ex from sticking an AirTag in my car and following me around. How do I know if such a small AirTag is hidden in my bag somewhere?

• AirTag is also designed to prevent unwanted tracking a key differentiator from its many AirTag Competitors
• On a technical level, bluetooth signal identifiers transmitted by AirTag rotate frequently to prevent unwanted location tracking / hacking
• More importantly, iOS devices can also detect an AirTag that isn’t with its owner, and notify the user if an unknown AirTag is seen to be traveling with them from place to place over time. This means that if someone stuck one in your bag and you own an iPhone it will warn you that a tracker belonging to someone else has hitched a ride with you and is announcing your location to the world. That’s pretty slick
• If I use Android, do I need to worry about stalkers tracking me with a hidden AirTag? Unfortunately, you kind of do. Since you won’t have an iOS device to automatically warn you that a suspicious AirTag is traveling with you, you’re likely not going to notice it right away. Fortunately, Apple has a backup system in place to give you some privacy… an AirTag separated from its owner for an extended period of time will play an audible sound when moved to draw attention to it. I guess we have to all tune our ears to listen for random beeps from now on!
• And, if you do find an unknown AirTag in your stuff, you can tap it with an iPhone (or Android phone – or any NFC-capable device) and instructions will guide them to disable the unknown AirTag. But, let’s be real, you’d A) throw it out or smash it immediately, and B) quickly fire off a text to your Ex telling them to stop being creepy, ASAP
• Basically, if you’re worried about privacy, it might be worth getting iPhone now just to “bug-sweep” your life and ensure that you are AirTag free!

Editor’s Note: Check out the results of our AirTags Range Ultimate Challenge – Tracking an AirTag from 3,500 miles away

As another real-world example, let’s say you rode your bike to the beach, and after a long day of playing in the waves and having lunch in the sun, you cannot remember where you parked. Luckily, you installed an Apple AirTag on your bicycle… how do you find your missing item with AirTags and how far away can you be from your AirTags and still have them work?

Bluetooth-based trackers, like the Tile Pro (see our Apple AirTags vs. Tile Trackers Comparison) or Samsung Galaxy SmartTag (see our Samsung SmartTags vs. Apple AirTags Review), have a maximum range of 300 feet or 100 meters. Apple’s AirTag matches this in basic bluetooth range, plus AirTags have an effectively unlimited range due to Apple’s global Find My network of iOS devices.

Does that mean you need to walk or drive around with your iPhone in your hand until you are within 300 feet / 100 meters of your lost bicycle with AirTags in order to find it? Nope. The best part about finding something with an AirTag is that it uses the network of Apple products and users to help you find your lost item (the so-called “Find My network”)… so you really just need anyone with an iPhone to be within 300 feet or 100 meters of your lost bike and you’ll be able to find it. With already nearly a billion Apple devices in the Find My network worldwide, someone will walk by your bike soon and you’ll find your AirTags-tracked device quickly!

Plus AirTags using the U1 chip can locate missing items within 30cm of accuracy! Your sunburned-self will be back on your bike in no time.

Looking for the Best AirTag Cases and AirTags Accessories? Check out our recent article on where to buy AirTags and AirTag Accessories

The key to this question is… Which Apple iPhones and Apple Watches have the Apple U1 Ultra-Wideband location chip? This is also what determines the size of the AirTags compatible network. AirTags work with (and are findable by) all iOS devices that use the Find My app – which is currently nearly a billion devices, spread all over the world. But to find the coolest AirTag features, the precision-location (indoor GPS with augmented reality) powered by U1 chip, you need one of the following iPhones:

• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max

Apple first included the U1 ultra-wideband chip, which is essential for AirTags compatibility, in its iPhone 11. According to Omdia, Apple sold over 52 million iPhones 11s in the first half of 2020. The iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max and iPhone 12 Mini all include the U1 chip and are therefore all compatible with AirTags… and Apple is expected to sell approximately 80 million iPhone 12s in 2020 (according to DigiTimes). So that’s approximately 130 million AirTags-compatible iPhones in the world by New Years, right there.

So is your iPhone compatible with AirTags? Yes, if you have an iPhone 11 or newer (i.e., an iPhone 11 or iPhone 12), your iPhone is AirTags-compatible.

What other devices are AirTags compatible?

Apple has now included its U1 ultra-wideband location chip in the Apple Watch for the first time, starting with its September 2020 release of the Apple Watch Series 6. So, every Apple Watch Series 6 and newer (but not the Apple Watch SE) has the potential to be AirTag compatible as well. We will have to see if and when Apple enables this functionality – so watch our AirTag Rumors carefully.

Apple doesn’t release unit-sales info for the Apple Watch, but they were estimated to sell 30 million units 2019 alone… So let’s assume another 20 million are sold this coming holiday season… That bring us to approximately 150 million to 200 million AirTags-compatible devices out in the world by the start of 2021.

Why does this matter? The more people out in the world who are walking around with AirTags compatible devices (iPhones and Apple Watches that have the U1 ultra-wideband chip), the faster you’ll be able to find your missing item!

In Q3’2020, IDC estimated that Apple had approximately 12% marketshare in worldwide smartphone shipments… That’s roughly one in eight smartphones sold. Extrapolate that out, and as more people start using the newer iPhones (iPhone 11 or 12), you’ll need only 8 or so people to walk within 300 feet of your lost AirTags-equipped device for you to be able to find it. Can’t remember whether you left your precious whatever with AirTags installed on it in a cab or at a restaurant? You only need 8 people to walk by for you to to be able to find your missing object using in Apple’s Find My app! That’ll be pretty quick.

We confirmed this hidden access technique ourselves with the below screenshots. Want to access the hidden AirTags features on your iPhone or iPad? Here are step-by-step instructions on how to access the new AirTags Items tab on your device, so you can preview how AirTags will work.

How to See Find My App’s Hidden AirTags Features

1. Open Safari on a device running iOS 14.3 / iPadOS 14.3, or later
2. Type in the link findmy://items in the URL / search bar, and hit Return / Go
3. A prompt pops up, asking if you want to “Open this page in ‘Find My’?”
4. Click “Open”
5. Now you’re in the Find My app, like normal, but you should also see a new tab called “Items” with a picture of keys, a backpack, and a bicycle (see Screenshot #1 below) — all things you can use AirTags to track in the future
6. You’ll see an option to “Add Item” to pair a new AirTags tracker to your iOS account (see Screenshot #2 below)
7. If you swipe up to read lower on the tab, you will also see an option to “Identify Found Item” (see Screenshot #3 below)– which is the button you’ll use if you’re a good samaritan and come across someone’s lost keys or whatever with an AirTag stuck to it, and want to return it to them

One is Patent Application 20200337162, excitingly titled “MOUNTING BASE FOR A WIRELESSLY LOCATABLE TAG” which was filed September 26, 2019, and just updated last month on October 22, 2020. The “wirelessly locatable tag” is – you guessed it – our much anticipated Apple AirTags.

Like most patents, this patent and its related other patents (another one is here – the beautifully named “FASTENER WITH A CONSTRAINED RETENTION RING”) are painful to read (unless you are a patent lawyer – in which case is must bring you… I don’t know… joy?) – but it does provide several tantalizing clues:

AirTags are going to be round discs (see picture below)

And they’re battery powered (with reference to multiple batteries being an option?). Will AirTags be rechargeable or will they have replaceable cell batteries? We’re betting rechargeable, but the patent applications are not clear on this topic – we will have to wait and see.