Anyone used Apple AirTags yet?

Has anyone used one for their bikes yet? I’ve just heard about these recently and think they’d be great to hide somewhere on my frame or saddle.
My only gripe is with the potential for it to notify the thief that they have been tracked when they get home (and proceed to throw my bike in a canal or something). For £29 it seems a bargain.
If you have one, how did you install it?

Yes. I’ve been testing these things a lot over the last two weeks. They work extremely well for bike tracking, car tracking, and postal service tracking. Three things they’re not really designed to do.

RE: Thieving. The ‘thief’ will only be alerted if they take the AirTag to their home and they have an iPhone. By which time you’ll know their location anyway. If they’re an Android user the AirTag will chirp for a few seconds after three days when moved (only when moved, not by itself…) then it’ll go to sleep for another 24hrs. Again, by which time you’ll have a rough idea where to send your “contracted retrieval services”. :slight_smile:

tldr; They’re not designed for bike tracking. They work well for it. It’s not perfect. It’s well worth the $.

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I forgot you were on here! I’ve watched your video, great review thanks.

I spent some time today breaking one open to remove the little speaker. Superglued it together, wrapped it in bubble wrap and stuffed it into the frame (removed the Di2 junction box in the down tube and put it in there). Not sure how much it will help if a pro thief steals the bike, but would hope that if an opportunist were to take it, and see that there was an AirTag in it, they wouldn’t be able to get at it and thus discard the bike somewhere for me to retrieve it. That’s the theory I’ve sold to myself at least.

To see your where your bike is, after it gets stolen is one thing. Convincing the authorities to something about it is a whole different story.

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I had my phone stolen, and I tracked it to a house. Chicago police offered to go with me to pick it up. I actually got it back, as she was NOT expecting to the owner show up at her door.

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I recently saw your insta vid about not putting it inside your stem as it affects the signal if it’s aluminium - my whole bike is, but people have been hiding it in frames, I assume that’s only been carbon bikes? Apart from a saddle bag that’s the only real option I have found so far to hide it well

Anyone had more experience with AirTags in the real world? I’m considering buying one. I’m about to travel, and the AirBnB won’t let me bring bikes inside the house (it’s a MIL apartment, so they would see if I just cheat)

Define real world? I have an AirTag hidden in a pocket in my saddle bag. It tracks well and fortunately the bike has never gone missing so I never had to use it. But nice to have.

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I wouldn’t put my bikes in a precarious position and rely on an Airtag to get them back. There are a number of obstacles to getting a bike back:

Airtag will notify non-owners that they are being followed by someone else’s airtag. (with a lot of caveats)

Airtag may be removed

The thief may be an android user and the Airtag won’t work

Police may not want to bother helping you

Criminals may have guns

I guess by “real world” what I meant was people’s experience in the wild now that they’ve been out for a while. If you read reviews they will tell you the latest Kicker and Neo issues have been solved, but we know from the real world that that’s not true. Or how TR is now integrated with Garmin, so no need to run them simultaneously, but then in the real world we find that the Training Effect metrics aren’t transferred.

We heard a lot about AirTags when they first came out, but then it went quiet. I was curious if that was because they work great or because they don’t or something in between. Thanks for sharing your experience!

I have Air Tags on my key chain and my dog’s collar (we frequently take it off when at home and then can’t find it later). They work fine, better than my experience with Tile. I have not tried hiding one on my bike because I’m not really convinced it would help me retrieve my bike were it stolen.

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I have had mine for a few months now and its been fine. Reassuringly it gets picked up very often and from a distance. I’ve had no teething issues other than trying to find a better place to hide it. Apprently inside frames blunts the distnace it can be seen from.
It does randomly start to chirp when i move it from the shed where it is stored overnight. I dont know if its because its recognised being moved or its a “im here” call if im looking for it nearby after not using it for awhile.
Generally happy and would recommend.

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I’ve used them in UPS boxes, bike travel bag for air travel, and inside a carbon frame… all three worked as advertised. Highly recommended.

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They work great. I have them on my bikes/in the car/keychains etc. I’ve done other tracking tests with the postal service which was scary accurate. I’m also part of a huge global AirTag postal test which has been happening for months. Pretty neat to see them pinging in the most random places.

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Thanks a ton for the feedback everyone. I need to look into the “they make noise” thing and see if that’s a dealbreaker, but I’m ready to give them a shot.

I’ve used them to track my bike and bags when I traveled to Europe. In the event my bags did not show up, I wanted to have some means to know where they were vs just relying on the airline tracking.

It worked great. Peace of mind knowing the bags were on the planes with me. They worked very well for what I wanted.

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if youre willing to open one up, theres a hack you can find on youtube to remove the speaker and stop the chirping noise

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