AirTags popularised Bluetooth trackers last year, but while Apple isn’t the first firm to create such a gadget, its ability to harness its enormous Find My network provides it a significant advantage over competitors.
AirTags can interact with adjacent iPhones to transmit their position back to their owners, forming a massive network that allows them to be astonishingly precise, particularly in countries where Apple has a large user base. Android currently lacks system-level tracker support, but recent evidence shows that this may be changing shortly.
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The Google Bluetooth tracker tag will have functionalities similar to Apple’s AirTags
The most recent Google Play Services (22.12.13) update has a few additional strings discovered by the 9to5Google team that reference efforts toward this aim, including mention of “unfamiliar device notifications” (presumably for detecting unknown tags nearby). When completed, this feature may appear in Google’s Safety & emergencies panel in Settings.
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The software also mentions three kinds of tags: “ATag” (probably short for AirTag), “Tile tag,” and “Finder tag.”
It’s unclear if, once finished, this tracker feature will act as a scanner (similar to the app recently published by Apple on Android to scan for nearby AirTags), or whether Google intends to provide broader tag functionality on Android and this is merely a component of that.
We’re hoping for the latter, as tag support on Android is presently patchy – Samsung SmartTags now require the SmartThings app to be monitored, while Tile devices require the Tile app.
Without system-level support, which AirTags are fortunate to have, you can only do so much. Even if this doesn’t work out as a scanner, it will still be a great step for Google to think about this.
Followers may learn more about this feature as they approach Google I/O 2022, which is scheduled for May 11th-12th.
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