Do Apple AirTag trackers work in tall buildings?

byFlorian published on

le AirTag is certainly not unfamiliar territory. We have seen many similar trackers from tile and Samsung. Apple has the major advantage of the Apple ecosystem, and in particular the Find My application and network, which is by far the largest on the planet.

Since this is a new niche market for Apple, there are many questions about how AirTags work - are they reliable, secure, or… useful at all? For the most part, the answer to all questions will be "yes". However, there are some aspects of the technology, which have either been overlooked by Tim Cook and the company, or the technology just isn't here yet.

In this section:

Floorgate

One such aspect is the fact that AirTags don't seem to work as well when "lost" in a multi-story building as they do when misplaced in wider spaces. Ben Sin, who lives in a multi-storey building in Hong Kong with multi-storey access. If he misplaces an item on one floor and then moves to another floor, the AirTag will not send an accurate location for the precision search function to work, meaning it has difficulty calculating the vertical distance (altitude).

Still, standard AirTag tracking can let you know that the tracker is essentially in the same building, but that's not very useful if you work or live in a high-rise building.

This problem will not affect everyone. Obviously, Hong Kong is a pretty specific case study. Apartments or even two-story homes with open-plan stairs shouldn't cause the same problems, meaning North American users likely won't be affected.

In fact, people who live in a large apartment building often have access to only one floor where their apartment is located, so the AirTag should work fine. However, if you work in a large building, where you are constantly moving between floors, the AirTag may not be the most useful device for your needs, as it will be for someone else. .

The big apple

But at the end of the day, isn't it better to have a tracker on your bag than not to have one at all? The least AirTags do is keep you from panicking because you will be able to see the approximate location of the item, even if you can't tell which floor it is on.

There is an interesting statistic on the subject, which comes from SkyScraperCenter on countries with the tallest urban buildings in the world. It's no huge surprise that China topped the list with 2395 (150m+), 823 (200m+) and 95 (300m+) buildings. The “highest city” is Hong Kong, which perfectly explains Ben's point of view.

The United States comes in second with 825 (150 m +), 220 (200 m +) and 28 (300 m +) tall buildings. Ironically, the Big Apple is Apple's Achilles heel. New York is the "highest city" in the United States. The United Arab Emirates is third on the list, then we have the island of Japan and South Korea is fifth.

We assume the thing to remember is: count your floors if you want to rely on your AirTag.

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