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Anyone else have extremely slow AirTag sharing?

S

scottylans

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 31, 2008
188
61
We picked up 4 Airtags and bound them to my wifes iPhone, which she then shared to my account using the new feature in iOS 17.

Both my iPhone and iPad can see them. However the location of the tags updates very very slowly, if at all.

I tested this today by putting my spare iPhone with her in the car and an Airtag.
My iPad could see the iPhone off in the city pretty much with a 5 to 60 second delay, it's generally pretty good.

I could not see the airtag change location for the entire 2 hours she was in the city. It still said the airtag was in the house with me.

Has anyone else messed with this? I understand data / network tracking of this must be really expensive, but even 5 minute delay would be ok. Not multiple hours.


(this was also the case when wife took 4 tags on holiday with her, it said they were at the airport for HOURS after she'd landed at her destination)
 
Check the sharing options are still capable to sync all info smoothly and at the same time ensure also that those airtags are not in your home
 
It's not a real time tracker, it sends out pings at random intervals, Those pings are picked up by other apple devices, The receiving device then reports to apple the tag's ID, and the location of the receiving device (AirTags have no GPS on their own). When you look for a tag, your phone contacts apple, and the location is sent from apple's servers.

  • the ping interval timing will change based on motion of the tag, and how long it's been since a phone has heard it's ping
  • it transmits a rotating ID code, not the serial number, so it can't be tracked by people looking for the serial number
  • all transmissions are encrypted, so even apple doesn't know where your tag is, only on one of your devices that has the decryption key.
I've seen other people here have tags not update that often if they were with the owner's phone (also applies to a shared owner)

you could try resetting the AirTags, and re-pairing with your phones,
 
We are having the same problem at work. We use them to track equipment that gets sent around the country.
The primary apple ID connected to the tags updates fairly well (on an ipad at our main office) but we recently shared the tracking to 3 other IDs and the tracking to these ID's seem to have a significant lag (we're talking days).

One important difference to scottylans case is that we're using shipping companies to send these items around so they are never staying in contact with a device logged into the primary ID.

Another detail here; the ipad used for the primary ID doesn't run ios17. I used a private newer ipad to temporarily log into the original ID to share the tracking, then logged out of this device.
 
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All our iOS devices are up to date.

Regardless if tag is near the parent device or not, the delay is atrocious. Anything from hours to days. It makes no logical sense.


Surely we can't be the only people with this issue?



If it was slow for both devices, I get it. But it's very odd that one device is up to date, the other device is well behind on data
 
I recently started trying out AirTag sharing, and I got them to update with a delay of about 15 minutes. Not real time, but also not hours. Try unpairing and re-pairing, reboot all the things, etc.
 
So silly we should need to do this, when they work flawlessly with the OG device / account they're shared with.

Maybe we should just stop sharing and re-share, unpair / re-pair sounds annoying.
 
scottylans said:
So silly we should need to do this, when they work flawlessly with the OG device / account they're shared with.

Maybe we should just stop sharing and re-share, unpair / re-pair sounds annoying.
Click to expand...
shared tags work fine for me, even third party trackers
 
erihp said:
Non-Apple Find My compatible devices.

Looking at shared tags now, I see an update within the last 30 minutes.
Click to expand...
There's no logical reason, why devices which are trusted, to share with can't see the airtag movement at the same speed or plus / minus 5 minutes.

How is this feature useful if a luggage bag is stolen and you need to track a tag with a shared iPhone? 30 minute delays are way too far behind. If the data on the primary phone, is up to date within minutes, that means the packets of data have hit the server, containing the correct coordinates. If anything it sounds more complicated to send old coordinates to the shared users devices.
 
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