Apple unveiled the long-awaited AirTags at its Spring Loaded virtual event today, introducing them as accessories that join the company’s Find My service. The fobs can be customized with engravings of characters, letters and emoji. A Hermes edition will also be available, and the regular versions will cost $29 each when they arrive on April 30th. Meanwhile, a four-pack will cost $99.
You’ll use the Find My app to locate your AirTag and any Apple phone with a U1 chip (like the iPhone 11 and 12 series) can give you AR overlays to direct you to your lost item. The company is calling this feature Precision Finding and it uses a combination of camera, accelerometer, gyroscope and ARKit data along with ultra wideband technology to locate your stuff down more accurately.
Your device will use sound, haptics and visual feedback like “Two feet to your right” to guide you to your belongings. For users who are blind or have low vision, this also works with Apple’s VoiceOver accessibility tool and will read out the instructions. Setting up an AirTag should also be simple, with a similar process to AirPods. When you bring your AirTag close to your iPhone, it should just connect and you can choose a name for the fob.
What if your belongings are far away from you? Well, Apple says that it will use the Find My network, which is approaching a billion devices, to locate it. It will detect Bluetooth signals from lost AirTags and “relay the location back to its owner, all in the background, anonymously and privately.”
You can also enable a “Lost Mode” to be alerted when your AirTag comes back within range or has been located by the Find My network. When a tag is in Lost Mode, people who come across it can tap it using an iPhone or an NFC-capable device, and they’ll be taken to a website showing your phone number (if you chose to provide it).
