How to set up AirTag history tracking

Create an account, connect the Apple ID your AirTags are registered to, and complete the two-factor prompt Apple sends. Recording starts immediately: every tag on that Apple ID is polled through the Find My network every 5 minutes, and each report that comes back is saved with its coordinates and timestamp. Connecting opens a 7-day free live tracking window, and what is recorded during it stays.

What do you need before you start?

Less than you would expect. There is no hardware to buy, nothing to install on the tags, and no re-pairing. The AirTags carry on working in Find My exactly as they did before.

• The AirTags you already own, already registered to your Apple ID.
• The Apple ID password for that account, typed once during setup.
• A trusted Apple device or phone number that can receive the two-factor code.
• About ten minutes, and a browser. There is no app to download.

One thing genuinely matters and it is not on that list: timing. History begins when you connect, so the setup is worth doing before the truck arrives rather than after something goes missing.

How do you set it up, step by step?

1. Go to airtaghistory.com and create an account. Tracking is free and no card is asked for.
2. Start the connect flow and sign in with the Apple ID that owns the tags, the same one you use in Find My.
3. Enter the two-factor code Apple sends to your trusted device. Apple requires this and it cannot be bypassed.
4. Wait for the tag list to populate. Every AirTag on that Apple ID is picked up automatically; you do not add them one by one.
5. Give the tags names you will still understand in six weeks: "kitchen boxes" beats "AirTag 3" when a claims adjuster is reading.
6. Leave it alone. Polling runs every 5 minutes from that point, with or without the tab open.

If you have tags on more than one Apple ID, such as a household where two people bought tags separately, each account has to be connected by the person who owns it. Only the tags on the Apple ID you sign in with can be recorded.

What should you expect in the first hour?

A sparse map, and that is the correct result rather than a fault. The first point usually lands within minutes of connecting, because the Find My network already has a recent report for a tag that has been near people. After that it fills in at whatever rate the world reports.

• A tag in a city or on a busy road: points arriving steadily, often close to every poll.
• A tag in a house or an office: a handful of points, all in roughly the same place.
• A tag in a sealed warehouse or a rural yard: possibly nothing for hours.
• A tag mid-ocean or on a ship's lower deck: nothing at all, sometimes for days.

An AirTag is not a GPS tracker. It has no satellite fix and no SIM; a point exists only when some passing iPhone relays a sighting. In the first hour you are watching how densely people pass your stuff, not how well the setup worked.

How long does free tracking last?

Connecting opens a 7-day free live tracking window. Polling, unlimited tags, and 5-minute updates run for the full 7 days.

When your tracking window closes, recording pauses — but your recorded history is never deleted or hidden. Everything logged during your window remains stored, browsable, and exportable.

What if a tag is missing from the list?

• Check the tag is registered to the Apple ID you connected, not a partner's or a family member's.
• Check it appears in Find My on your own device. If Find My cannot see it, nothing downstream can either.
• A tag that has not been seen by any passing iPhone recently may be listed with no points yet. That is a coverage gap, not a setup failure.
• If the connection has expired, reconnecting re-establishes the session; your recorded history stays where it is.

Sessions do expire. Apple's tokens are short-lived by design, so every so often you will be asked to sign in and pass two-factor again. Worth checking before a move week rather than during it, since nothing is recorded while a connection is stale.

When is the right time to set this up?

Before the thing you might later need to prove. A move, a flight with a checked bag, a car on a transport truck, a container booking, a piece of equipment going out with a subcontractor.

Setting up afterwards still gives you a live pin and a record from today onward, which is often enough for the second half of a dispute: where the shipment sat after it arrived, or whether the replacement leg went the way it was supposed to. It cannot give you the part you missed.