There Is a Secret New AirTag Feature That Makes It Even Better at Tracking Pets

You can now share an AirTag’s location with others. Finally.

Published March 31, 2024

·

Updated March 31, 2024

Every product is carefully selected by our editors. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more

I’m at the dog park almost every week. And when I’m there, I see a lot of AirTags. It makes sense: Apple’s little trackers are affordable; they can easily be attached to a dog’s collar; and they work really, really well with iPhones. On paper, they’re the ideal pet tracker.

The only thing is, Apple does not recommend AirTags for tracking pets — or any living creature (especially people), for that matter. Instead, it insists that AirTags are meant simply to track belongings like a bag, bike, wallet or keys.

Of course, you can still use an AirTag to track a pet, and Apple recently rolled out a feature, AirTag Sharing, that makes the device even better at the task.

You can finally share your pet’s location with family and friends

For years, you couldn’t share an AirTag’s location with anybody else. So if you had a family dog, only one person in the family was able to track it on their Find My app. Thankfully, that’s changed.

With iOS 17, Apple finally rolled out the ability to share an AirTag’s location — whether the person you’re sharing it with is part of your family or not. So if your dog goes missing, anybody that you’ve shared your AirTag with can help aid the search.

airtag pet tracker — Thanks to iOS 17, you can share the location of your pet with up to six people.

You can share your AirTag’s location with up to six people. Here’s how:

Open the Find My app
Select the Items tab
Select the AirTag you want to share
Under the “Share This AirTag” option, select Add Person

Once selected, these people will get notified that an AirTag has been shared with them. They will then be able to locate the shared AirTag via the Find My app on their iPhone.

If you want to stop sharing your pet’s location, you can follow the above steps, select the name of the person and then selecting “Stop Sharing.”

You still need to live around other people with iPhones

AirTags need to be around iPhones (and other Apple devices) to work. Every time an AirTag gets within Bluetooth range of another Apple device that supports Find My — which are iPhones, Apple Watches, all AirPods and Macs — the two passively communicate via a secure Bluetooth signal.

This means for the most accurate reading of your AirTag’s location, it needs be in areas where there are a lot of Apple devices in close proximity — in other words, anywhere there are a lot of people, not the woods.

So if you live in an urban or suburban area, and your pet wearing an AirTag goes missing, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find them.

Let’s hope you never have to find out.