How an AirTag finds things — and why everything rests on that
An AirTag has no GPS and no connection to the mobile network. It is a small Bluetooth transmitter with a coin-cell battery. It does not know its own location and sends it nowhere.
Instead it does this: every few seconds it sends out a short signal. When an iPhone or another Apple device passes by, it picks up that signal, adds its own location to it and sends it to the Find My network. What you then see on your phone is where the stranger's iPhone that heard your AirTag last was.
That is the whole principle. There is nothing wrong with it — it is brilliantly cheap and works without fees. But it has one condition that the maker does not print in big letters on the box: an AirTag is found only where people with iPhones walk.
Apple says it directly: the AirTag is for finding things, not for tracking animals and people.
When an AirTag on the collar is enough
Let's be fair. There are situations where an AirTag does the job for a fraction of the price of anything else:
- A dog who ran off in a housing estate or in the city centre. People with phones are everywhere, the location updates often and is accurate to tens of metres. If the dog ran round the corner and is waiting outside a shop, the AirTag will lead you to them.
- A dog who got lost at somebody's home. The neighbour who took them in probably has an iPhone in the kitchen — and you can see which house it is.
- A collar that fell off on a walk and is lying somewhere by the path. A thing that does not move gets “found” in time, when someone walks past.
- As a backup on the harness alongside a proper tracker — cheap, weighs nothing, and in the city it gives a second source of location.
And one thing an AirTag has genuinely solved well: Lost Mode. Whoever finds it and holds their phone to it sees your message and contact. That is exactly what every thing on a dog's neck should do — and it is why we too have a QR code for the finder on the case.
When it is a mistake — and why “dangerous”
Now the other half. A dog does not run according to where iPhone coverage is. They run after a deer into the woods, after a scent across a field, away from firecrackers anywhere at all. And exactly there the AirTag behaves like this:
1. In the woods, in the fields and in the countryside it shows nothing — or an old location.
If nobody with an iPhone has passed the dog, the network knows nothing about them. In the app you see the last location someone picked up — perhaps the edge of the woods an hour ago. The dot on the map looks like the dog's location. It is not. It is the place where a stranger's phone last heard them. The dog has been kilometres further since then.
This is the “dangerous” in the heading: not that the AirTag does not work, but that it looks as if it works. You search in the wrong place with the feeling that you are searching in the right one.
2. You cannot “switch to live tracking”.
With a running dog you need a location every few seconds. An AirTag gives you one when another iPhone happens to turn up near it — in a minute, in an hour, never. You do not control the refresh rate; passers-by do.
3. Precision Finding only works up close.
The arrow that leads you to an AirTag to within a metre works over a distance of a few tens of metres from your phone — and at full range only with a newer iPhone. Great for keys under the seat. Worthless for a dog over the hill.
4. Nothing tells you the dog has gone.
A safe zone, an alert when the dog leaves the garden, route history — those are features of a device that knows and reports its own location. An AirTag does not know it. You find out the dog is missing when you notice it yourself.
5. On a dog's neck it is a coin-cell battery in a plastic case.
An AirTag runs on a replaceable CR2032 battery — and dogs chew. A swallowed coin-cell battery starts burning tissue within tens of minutes to hours; it means going straight to the vet, and do not induce vomiting. That is no reason to reject the AirTag — it is a reason to put it in a proper case and check it regularly.
6. An Android phone will not relay the location.
The Find My network is made of Apple devices — iPhones, iPads, Macs. An Android phone passing the dog will not send their location to the network. What Android can do: if someone catches the dog and holds their phone to the AirTag, it reads the Lost Mode message and your contact. But for that they first have to have the dog in their hands — and in a village where only a minority of people have an iPhone, the “dense network” is suddenly sparse.
What you actually pay for with a GPS collar and a subscription
Here we get to the question behind the whole topic: “Why should I pay monthly when an AirTag is free?”
The answer is in who sends the location. A GPS collar has its own SIM card inside. It works out its location itself from satellites and sends it over the mobile network — from the woods, from a field, from a cottage, from the motorway — without anyone having to walk past. The subscription pays for that SIM card, the servers and the maps. It is like a phone: you buy the device once, but you can only call with a plan.
That is why the two are not competitors but answers to two different questions:
| AirTag | GPS collar | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it gets the location | from strangers' Apple phones nearby | from satellites, by itself |
| How it sends it | through a stranger's phone, when there is one | through its own SIM, when there is signal |
| In the woods and in fields | usually nothing, or an old location | works everywhere with mobile coverage |
| Live tracking | no | yes, a location every few seconds |
| Escape alert | no | yes, safe zone |
| Running costs | no fee | subscription |
| For the finder | Lost Mode by holding a phone to it (Android too) | QR code on the case, a page without an app |
How it looks with Tifik
The collar works out its location itself and sends it over its own SIM card. Outdoors it sends it every five minutes; when you are searching for the dog, you switch to live tracking with a location every five to ten seconds. It works everywhere with mobile coverage, trips around Europe included.
From your phone you light it up and ring it — even when the dog is at home and the collar is saving battery. The safe zone lets you know when the dog leaves it. And for the finder there is a QR code on the case: they photograph it with any phone, see the dog's name and let you know with one button, without your number being made public.
The battery lasts 14 days in normal use — that is, roughly two hours outdoors a day and the rest of the day at home. For a dog who is outdoors all day, it is five days.
And if you have already bought an AirTag? Keep it. On keys it is excellent — and on the collar it can stay as a backup for the city. Just do not let it be the only thing you rely on when the dog disappears past the edge of the woods.