Apple Will Let You Share AirTag Locations With a Link

With iOS 18.2, Apple will allow you to share the location of a lost AirTag with other people and with more than 15 different airlines. The Verge reports: When using the feature, you can generate a Share Item Location link within the Find My app on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Once you share the link with someone, they can click on it to view an interactive map with the location of your lost item. Apple will update the website automatically when the lost item moves, and it will also display a timestamp when it moved last. Apple will turn off the feature once you find your lost item. You can also manually stop sharing the location of an AirTag at any time, or the link will "automatically expire after seven days." [...]

As part of the rollout, Apple is partnering with over 15 airlines, including Delta, United, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Air Canada, and more. All of these airlines will be able to "privately and securely" accept links to lost items, as "access to each link will be limited to a small number of people, and recipients will be required to authenticate in order to view the link through either their Apple Account or partner email address." This feature will be available to airlines in the "coming months." Additionally, SITA, a baggage tracing solution, will also implement Share Item Location into its luggage tracker.

Hmmm still missing the obvious

[ZERO1ZERO]

Why cant they make it so an airtag location can be viewed by more than one person permanently, without link bs? Example- work assets such as tool boxes, equipment, key sets, these should be assignable to the managers or the teams. The airtag is focussed the wrong way imo. Its designed for a single person to find multiple things (with multiple airtags) make it so that multiple people can find a single thing with a single airtag shared. This family grouping stuff where a owner can have other decices un

Not the target market

[khchung]

Why cant they make it so an airtag location can be viewed by more than one person permanently, without link bs? Example- work assets such as tool boxes, equipment, key sets, these should be assignable to the managers or the teams.

Because Apple's target market is not businesses, which might only buy a few iPads and dozens of Airtags over 5-10 years. Apple's target is people who don't mind paying $1000 every 1-3 years to upgrade their phones, Airtags is just one more thing to lock them into the Apple ecosystem.

It is a good thing that Apple stay focused on the right target.

While it might be nice to perma-share Airtag locations within the family, it is rarely needed for more than a week (e.g. during a family vacation). Unless maybe if

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

You can't even view AirTags on the iCloud web interface though. Not very helpful if you lose the device you paired them with too.

Hopefully Android tags will get better next year, and we will see cheaper ones come onto the market. You can already get AirTag compatible (or more accurately Apple Find My compatible) tags on AliExpress for a couple of bucks, and they work just fine. They don't have ultra-wideband capability for precise location when you are within a few metres, but they work fine for global posi

Re:

[cmseagle]

Why cant they make it so an airtag location can be viewed by more than one person permanently, without link bs?

That feature has existed since iOS 17. [apple.com]

Re: Hmmm still missing the obvious

[ZERO1ZERO]

Very good! Looks like this may solve some of my use cases i will try it out. Thanks

Re:

[wwphx]

You can. I took an annual trip last week, and I shared my tags with my wife, it had no problem sharing links with multiple people. But this was sharing with people with Apple devices. Which I think is awesome. The article is talking about time-limited tracking sharing with non-Apple devices, which is still a useful thing. I frequently use two Airtags: one is easily found, the other not so much, so if thieves steal my backpack (or whatever) and look for tags hopefully they'll find the easy one, toss it,

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Did you not make it through the entire summary?

A new Apple feature!

[Applehu Akbar]

Now we have to`figure out why this is totally evil...

I know! Elon Musk probably use this feature.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

Now we have to`figure out why this is totally evil...

Well, from my perspective it's still quite "evil" that AirTags are pretty much useless for anti-theft purposes.

"Oh hi Mr. Thief, just so you know, you might want to go digging through that thing you've stolen and remove the AirTag, because we wouldn't want the rightful owner to recover their stuff."

AirTags are for scatterbrained folks who are always misplacing their stuff, and apparently they're also a substitute for airlines actually taking some sort of real responsibility when they lose your luggage. Des

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Well, from my perspective it's still quite "evil" that AirTags are pretty much useless for anti-theft purposes.

What about when the airline steals your luggage?

Re:

[Applehu Akbar]

AirTags are for scatterbrained folks who are always misplacing their stuff, and apparently they're also a substitute for airlines actually taking some sort of real responsibility when they lose your luggage.

My suitcase AirTag has already retrieved it from airline hell. I gave my girlfriend a set, and I can't count the number of times we have used them to track down her two sets of keys.

Yes, it sucks that Apple was bullied into making that "here I am, thief!" software change by the #MeToo crowd, but if you want to AirTag your bike without anyone knowing it's there, disabling the speaker is trivial.

Re:

[DesertNomad]

He certainly doesn't like it when we track his plane.