pelirary

Lately I have been seeing numerous ads online for air tags to put on bikes. Can someone please tell me why these items would be necessary? I know my wife would like it on my bike so she wouldn't worry about me when I am out longer than I intended. But my iPhone serves the same purpose. I can't think of any reason I would need to know where my bike is located. It is either under me on the road or safely housed at home.

njkayaker

There are some who think AirTags could be useful for tracking stolen bikes. Arguable as to how good they’d be for this (but not too surprising).

People selling AirTag mounts are being capitalists (not too surprising either).

AndreyT

That probably explains why you "can't think of any reason". For most cyclists it doesn't work that way. Our bikes are sometimes stacked by a roadside cafe or a coffee shop, while we refill our water bottle inside. Or devour a mid-ride snack. Or... well, using the bathroom. Or they are hanging in a bike room in a parking garage next to our office. Or attached to a simple bike rack outside said office. Or... well, you get the idea.

Obviously, the main purpose of these tags is to track stolen bicycles. Why one might want to track a stolen bicycle is a different question though. If you live in a civilized country, where law enforcement will actually act on the information provided by such tracking devices, AirTags can be quite efficient in locating and retrieving stolen property. If you live in those backwards parts of the world, where the ruling regime makes sure that basic law enforcement inaccessible to "mere mortals", retrieving stolen property is out of question. But these AirTags can still be used purely for entertainment purposes. It is like giving a GPS tracker to a local squirrel just to see where it will take it to. If can be fun. Whether you are into this kind of thing - only you know.

Iride01 

Air tags won't really help your wife track where you are on the bike. If you have a smart phone, all you need to do is enable location tracking and share it with your wife. On android phones most would do that through Google maps. There are other apps too. For iPhones, there must be something similar. My sister uses a iPhone, but so we can share our location with each other, she loaded google maps to her phone and we can see where each other is.

If you use a Garmin device that can pair with your smartphone, then you can also set up live tracking with it. I've found it's much more accurate than the Google maps location. If you use other GPS devices, perhaps they have a similar feature too.

The people putting air tags on their bikes are likely more concerned with finding their bike after it's stolen. That's not big on my list to worry about. My homeowners insurance will pay for my bike if stolen. And after seeing how stolen cars get trashed after being stolen, I wouldn't want my bike or car returned. I'll just take the insurance money and get new or comparable used.

I also think that the air tag is really not going to catch a professional thief that want's your bike to resell or part out. They know how to find the air tag.

tempocyclist

I put one in my bike box when travelling (which I do a bit for work).

With the AirTag I can track the box's position from airport to airport. It would be useful if my bike failed to turn up at one end, as I would (hopefully) be able to see where it ended up. Either still at the departure airport, arrived but not sent out, or somewhere else completely!

Thankfully I've not had to use it for that purpose, but sometimes playing the "where is my bike box now" game while waiting at the airport kills some time...

veganbikes

AirTags are designed for lost items, like say my keys fell out in the couch and I need to find them. Using them for bikes is just silly and marketing over sensibility.
If my bike is stolen an AirTag is the last thing I want on it.

downtube42

I might use one on my next international flight with a bike. Other than that, meh.