This is really useful if you, like me, tend to swap out your Bluetooth trackers between items as you’re using them. If you’ve attached a Pebblebee Clip to your luggage, you can pop it out and put it in your pocket for when you grab dinner by yourself while you’re traveling. Pebblebee works with both Apple Find My and Google Find Hub. If you’re nervous about triggering the siren, you can also grab the Pebblebee Card 5 ($35), which is the same price and doesn’t have the siren.
Tips and Tricks for Finding Your Luggage
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Photograph: Adrienne So
I have been losing my luggage since I was four years old, getting sent on planes halfway around the world. Here are a few ways I’ve learned to keep track of my luggage (and how to deal with the disappointment when I inevitably don’t).
Zip your tracker into an interior pocket. You don’t want to just place it loose in your belongings. Maybe it will slide into the middle of your clothes, where the Bluetooth signal will get blocked, or you or a careless TSA employee might accidentally shake it out onto the floor. Some of my favorite carry-on suitcases, like the Peak Design Roller Pro ($600), have AirTag pockets built into the bag, so you don’t have to worry about them falling out.
Label your individual trackers. It’s pretty easy to change the name and emoji of your trackers in Find My or Find Hub, and you should! It’s hard to keep track of which item you’ve lost when you have six AirTags, all labeled “Adrienne’s Luggage.”
Check the battery before you leave. If you’re not traveling often, it’s easy to let your luggage Bluetooth trackers sit unused for months.
What about GPS trackers? GPS trackers use satellites, whereas AirTags and other similar trackers use Bluetooth and a crowdsourced network of compatible devices they can communicate with, such as phones. While you may experience small gaps in coverage with Bluetooth trackers when you’re locating your luggage—for example, your suitcase got loaded onto the cart and isn’t within 30 feet of an iPhone while it’s making its way to baggage claim—you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a lot of devices on the Find My or Find Hub network at an airport to help establish the tracker’s position. GPS trackers usually require a subscription, so I don’t recommend them for luggage tracking if you’ll only use them a few times a year.
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