How? Airtags only work because Apple uses any iPhone with BLE support as a detec... | Hacker News

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sgtnoodle on May 3, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge ...

How? Airtags only work because Apple uses any iPhone with BLE support as a detector, whether or not an app is installed. An off-brand BLE beacon would require an app to work at all, and I highly doubt Apple would make it easy for a third party app to run all the time in the background.

mrb on May 3, 2023 [–]

According to https://developer.apple.com/find-my/ manufacturers of third party hardware CAN leverage the iPhone BLE network to connect to the FindMy network.

sgtnoodle on May 3, 2023 | [–]

That's pretty neat. I wonder, is the user experience any worse than using airtags? Or is it functionally the same?

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