Airtag beeping when I'm out of town drives my wife nuts.

[lordhamster]

Since airtags launched, I've been aware of the "anti-stalker" features of the Airtags. My understand was that the airtag needs to be near one of my apple devices to basically reset the clock before it starts beeping. Here is the problem. I just got back from 3 days out of town for work. It seems my dog's airtag (on her collar) started beeping. Which is odd because my macbook pro was powered on and at home. I thought the airtags could see those and recognize them as my device. Furthermore, everyone in my household is part of an "Apple Family", so there are tons of devices from my wife and kids around.

My dog's airtag beeps when I'm away despite the fact that it is in the same house with the devices that I didn't take with me:

• Devices Registered directly to my Apple ID:
  • Macbook Pro
  • 3 Apple TVs
• Devices Registered to members of my Apple Family:
  • Wife's Macbook Pro
  • 2x kids' iPad Air 5s
  • 3x Apple watches
  • 2x Older macbooks the kids have.

It drives me nuts that:

• Airtags don't seem to take into account the "home" location
• Airtags don't take into account family membership
• Airtags don't seem to (at least mine don't) recognize when they are left near my other Apple devices registered to my Apple ID.

Am I missing something here? Shouldn't my Macbook Pro at least have kept the dog's tag from beeping?

 

[fischersd]

The family sharing has been on everyone's wish list since they launched. Not sure why Apple hasn't implemented it yet - but I'm sure we'll get it one day.

For the rest, yep, it really should. You should send that in via the feedback app or their website:

Feedback - AirTag

Apple wants to hear from you. Send us your comments and feedback about AirTag.

www.apple.com

 

[waw74]

even though the Mac is yours, it's not your location. That's determined by your phone, or watch.

not sure exactly how it works, the tags can't find their own location, they just send out a ping, and the devices that pick that up determine the location to send to apple. I'm not even sure if other devices send a location back to the tags, so pretty sure they don't actually know where they are. So a "don't alert at home" feature might not be possible.

For the anti-stalking, your phone might answer the ping so the tag knows the phone is close, or the phone could send out pings every so often to let the tag know it's close. Then if the tag hasn't seen the phone in a bit, and the tag is moving, then it starts the anti-stalking ping.


apple hasn't really revealed too many details of how it all works. so it's all mostly guessing on our parts.

 

[daxomni]

Am I missing something here? Shouldn't my Macbook Pro at least have kept the dog's tag from beeping?

According to Apple logic while it's possible that you've simply gone on a trip like millions of other people it's much more likely that you've casually planted thousands of dollars of Apple gear in an effort to stalk your wife.

 

[dgreening]

There is an option to not notify you when left at "Home". Go into the items in Find My. Find the one you want and then click "Notify When Left Behind". Add the exception for Home or any other location. I think this is what you are wanting it to do. I could be wrong but I know I have my items all set with don't notify if left at Home and I don't get the notifications.

 

[NO🇳🇴]

I solved this by just deleting them and adding them again once in a while. Haven't beeped in weeks now and when it happens I just re-add them.