PSA: AirTags cannot be tracked by and shared with multiple family members
If you’ve been wondering whether AirTags, Apples’ personal item trackers, work with the Family Sharing feature so you could share AirTags with family members, we have bad news for you.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS:
- Other family members cannot track your own AirTag.
- AirTags do work with Family Sharing but in a limited way.
- Family members can only silence “AirTag Detected” safety alerts.
AirTags cannot be shared with family members
The AirTag is a tiny device for tracking personal belongings. If you thought about sharing your AirTag with a member of your Family Sharing circle so they could find a location of a shared item like a set of keys that has been lost or, worse, stolen, think again as this won’t work.
As noted by commenters on Reddit, this is a strange omission given that you can already track the location of family members’ iPhones, iPads, Macs and other Apple devices. AirTags also appear in the Find My app but you cannot track the location of a family member’s AirTag.
→ What is the Find My app and how do I use it?
That being said, there’s nothing on the technical side that would prevent Apple from implementing this much-needed feature with a future software update. Having an option to share AirTags with family members would be super convenient. Besides, Tile and some other personal item trackers already have offered this capability for some time now.
AirTags and Family Sharing: What works?
The only supported AirTag feature for Family Sharing users is the ability to silence an “AirTag Detected” notification which appears after your iPhone discovers an AirTag not registered to your account has been moving with you (to prevent stalking and unwanted tracking).
According to a support document on Apple’s website:
If the AirTag is attached to an item you’re borrowing, you can tap Pause Safety Alerts to turn off ‘AirTag Detected’ notifications for one day. If you’re borrowing an AirTag from a member of your Family Sharing group, you can turn off Safety Alerts for one day or indefinitely.
A no-brainer solution for AirTag sharing via Family Sharing would permit everyone in your Family Sharing circle to locate and share your AirTag with another family member using a different Apple ID than yours. A more developed solution would let you pick the Family Sharing members to share AirTags with. And the best one would let you do this on a per-AirTag basis.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2021/05/04/airtag-family-sharing-tracking/
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