Checking Your AirTag Battery About One Year Later

03 MAY 2022 - When Apple released AirTag about a year ago, the company said the item tracker’s battery would last for about a year. About a year later, you may be wondering whether you need to change that battery. 

Sounds like maybe? According to a piece from Apple Insider:

It's impossible to predict with any certainty how long a battery will last, because it depends chiefly on how much it's used. And if the battery in your AirTag does get so low that you need to replace it, your iPhone will notify you.

But maybe you’re going away for a while and don’t want to have to worry. Or maybe “worry” is your default setting and you just want to doublecheck. Easy to do: 

• Go to the Find My app on the associated iPhone

• Select Items at the bottom of the screen

• Tap the AirTag in question

Now, if you look in Devices and don’t see it there, don’t freak out. I know I did, but - again - you’re selecting Items at the bottom of the screen, not Devices. Once you find the AirTag in Find My, you’ll see a little battery indicator, just like the one on iPhone. You can make your battery replacement decision based on how full that teeny-tiny indicator looks.

It’s actually kind of crazy that Apple put the battery usage at about a year. The Apple Insider piece has the Cupertino-company saying in a support doc: 

Battery life based on an everyday use of four play sound events and one Precision Finding event per day… Battery life varies with usage, environmental conditions, replacement battery manufacturer, and many other factors; actual results will vary.

Who’s pinging their AirTag five times a day? I may have the first day… Anyway - that’s the battery haps with AirTag one year later.