A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

Are AirTags actually useful for anti-theft purposes?

I threw one in the trunk of my car (just in case - I ordered a 4-pack and I had a spare one), and every single time I drive somewhere it chirps loudly when I'm exiting my driveway, making its presence immediately obvious without any delays, and despite my phone being with me in the car.

Yes, but only if you remove the speaker which is well documented on YouTube

Even if you do that they will still notify a thief with a notification on their iPhone.

I think that's ok though, right?

As long as you do a good job placing/hiding it, the thief can't easily find and remove/disable without the speaker.

How big is your item and how hard is it to search? If you know a bag has an airtag in it, it won't take that long to find.

If you get a bit creative you can definitely hide it well enough that "removing the air tag" is no longer the weak point in the plan.

I've got a Pelican 1510 that has a suitcase-style pop up handle and wheels on it. It's just screwed on there. I took the screws out, took it off, filed the sides of the air tag down slightly so I could fit it in a little cranny and then held it in place with some black tape so it's hard to see. Even if you use an iPhone to try and find it, it looks like it's hidden in the liner or something. But it takes tools and about 15 minutes to get it out _even if you know exactly where it is_ and how to get to it.

For one of my backpacks it actually came with an "air tag pocket" which is just a spot on an inside seam where there's a small gap you can slide the air tag in and it's held securely. I know it's there and it still takes me a while to find the thing to take it out.

For my other, I pretty much just get by on it having a bazillion little pockets and pouches and lot of random stuff in it. The air tag's nestled in there beside the flashlight that the TSA spent almost a half hour looking for after x-raying my bag repeatedly before finally telling me what they were looking for and me pulling it out for them.

I'm relatively certain I'd recover my bag with the air tag still in it. Whether or not the _valuables_ are still there is a different story.

I have a feeling that thieves aren't going to spend any time fooling around if it isn't obvious, they'll dump the valuables out of the bag, and discard the bag.