Tracking devices have become increasingly popular since the launch of Apple’s AirTags earlier this year. They’re similar to Tile trackers, and the principle is simple: you can easily link one to your Apple account and it will use Apple’s Find My network to find it. As long as your AirTag is near someone’s iPhone, you’ll be able to see their location. And you don’t even need an iDevice for that now, because Apple has released an official app to track AirTags on Android devices. There is, however, a rather important caveat.
Tracker Detect is one of the few Apple apps available on Android, joining Apple Music, the Beats app, and an app to switch to iOS. You can use it to track nearby unwanted AirTags, and if you want to identify one, you can use the app to play a sound on it. From there, you can either scan the AirTag using NFC or turn it off by removing its battery.
Although it is quite neat, its functionality is also very basic. It lacks automatic scanning, which means you have to specifically launch the app to search for a beacon, and you won’t get notifications about lost AirTags nearby like you would on an iPhone. You could argue that this makes this Tracker Detect app somewhat useless – many people in the reviews section agree that the app should be able to perform an automatic scan. Manually searching for AirTags around you every 5 minutes is not the most productive way to spend your day.
It’s also not like there are any obstacles for this to happen on Android phones – it’s just Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). And allowing non-Apple devices to automatically search for AirTags and have them contribute to Apple’s Find My network would also dramatically improve the success of locating AirTags in general, especially outside of the United States. I guess it’s better to have something rather than nothing at all, however.
As Apple points out in a statement to CNET, improving privacy is the primary focus of this new app: “Tracker Detect gives Android users the ability to search for an AirTag or Find compatible item trackers. My family who could travel with them without their knowledge. . We are raising the bar on privacy for our users and the industry, and hope more will follow. “
If you want to scan AirTags with your Android phone, you can download the app from the Google Play Store now.
Image credit: Daniel Romero
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