Of course the title is clickbait. Even if you were able to play music through it, the speaker is quite tiny. I am guessing it uses a resonating frequency to make it sound loud enough.

I have an AirTag on my motorbike. Whenever my iPhone is not close, it beeps quite loud. The thing is: I don’t have an iPhone! I have an iPad and it is always quite far from the motorbike.

Of course, the beeping is there on purpose. It would only beep in case the owner left something behind, allowing for people around to notice it. If that wasn’t the case, the sound would allow someone to know they have an AirTag with them, sharing their location.

Please never use an AirTag on something that is not yours.

I actually have two locators on my bike:

  • One is motorbike specific and is hidden in plain sight under the seat, allowing the thief to disconnect it and feel successful in some way.
  • The AirTag, hidden away. This is the fallback locator in case they disconnect and leave the first one behind.

Now I will provide the steps I followed, than also happen to be the ones that will leave your AirTag as good as possible, without looking battle-scarred.

Steps⌗

  1. First twist the back metal plate and take out the battery. Back metal plate, battery and AirTag from left to right

  2. With a knife or thin blade, slowly vandalize the three places where there are tabs. You might have a look at step 4 to better hint the key points. From left to right: AirTag board and midplate

  3. Notice the speaker on the reverse of the plastic midplate. Now take that knife and split the midplate and the speaker apart. From left to right: AirTag board and midplate with speaker attached From left to right: AirTag board, midplate and speaker separated

  4. Leave the speaker out and close the midplate by aligning the battery contact points and applying pressure. Closed AirTag

  5. Put it back together and wait for no sound to tell you it is on.

As you can see, steps are simple enough, even though on step 2 I managed to also vandalize my finger.