Here’s all we know about Apple AirTags, the Tile-rival expected to work within Apple’s device ecosystem…when it’s officially announced, anyway.
We’ve heard rumor after rumor that Apple will be launching a Tile-rivalling tracker for a couple of years now. While we don’t know when it will be released, it’s a promising accessory, leveraging the power of its iOS network to find anything you attached an AirTag to, as they’re being called by leakers. So what are AirTags? The pitch is that you clip one of these things to an item you don’t want to lose, and you’ll then be able to track it from an Apple device. While the rumors we’ve heard only say that they’ll work through iPhones, we’d be surprised if they didn’t work with every device in Apple’s ecosystem. We still don’t know much about the accessory, and Apple hasn’t officially acknowledged, or even hinted, that it’s coming. All we have are leaks and rumors sourced from the usual tech breadcrumbs, including code snippets from iOS 13 and iOS 14, that suggest a new device is coming. Sadly, we didn’t hear anything about the Apple AirTags at WWDC 2020, the Apple Watch 6 launch or, again, at the iPhone 12 unveiling… despite multiple leaks in the build up to each confirming they were on the way. And with no mention of the AirTags at Apple’s One More Thing launch event for Macs on November 10, the end of 2020 arrived with no AirTags debut. Until we find out more, then, here’s what we do know about the Apple AirTags. Having not seen them at Apple’s September event, we expected them to launch in October, alongside the iPhone 12. However, that didn’t happen. But we’ve seen hidden references in iOS 14 that suggest the trackers aren’t too far away from being launched. Our best guess for when we might see them is at Apple’s spring event, which leaker Jon Prosser has suggested they’ll arrive at. In the same breath he (and others) said the event would take place on March 23, but he’s since revised that to sometime in April. He’d also previously suggested March 16 would be the date, so we’d take both the timing and AirTags‘ presence with a serious helping of salt – though the Apple spring event seems the obvious venue for them to launch at.
