You know it: You leave your bike in the station parking lot, but then spend minutes searching the sea of two-wheelers. Or you want to be sure that you can find your bike if stolen. The Apple AirTag is a tracker that can help with this, but is therefore not useful for pinning skillfully on a steel horse. Dutch website tagjefiets.nl has a possible solution: they’ve designed a custom bicycle bell to mask the AirTag.
Small devices to track your bike via GPS have been around for a while. However, they easily cost over 100 euros and are best fitted by a professional.
Then Apple AirTag is even easier. The jewel is round with a diameter of about three centimeters and can be attached to luggage or a set of keys, for example. iPhone owners can then locate the gadget in the Find My app and even find its exact location with a newer phone.
In theory, a tracker could be useful for finding a bike, but then you still need to be able to subtly confirm it. The AirTag bike bell cleverly solves this problem. There is a cavity inside that perfectly fits one AirTag, without it noticing if you didn’t know. The bike bell and AirTag together cost €64.
As a result, you don’t have to do anything other than set up the AirTag with your iPhone, which is a simple process. Attach the bike bell to your handlebar, put the tracker inside and screw it all the way back up neatly. Much easier than having a GPS tracker removed by a bike repairman.
Your bike will then appear in the Find My app, in a separate tab for Things. From there you can search nearby to find the exact location of your bike. You can also make the AirTag play a sound, if it really can’t be found.
You can also send notifications to your iPhone. The AirTag will then tell you when you leave it somewhere. You can exclude locations where you can leave your bike, such as your home or the bike park at your work. The idea is clever, but it can lead to redundant and somewhat useless notifications if you leave your bike in many different locations, such as a bike rack on a shopping street.
If your bike is stolen, you can report the accompanying AirTag lost. If someone finds your bike, they can use the contact details you entered to report it. You can also check where your bike is in the Find My app and retrieve it. This is of course entirely at your own risk and is only possible if your steel horse is still in the public domain. Local police areas sometimes help when using a tracker, but this is also not a guarantee.
We have been testing for a month if the AirtTag Bicycle Bell is really useful and all together it is a simple way to get more peace of mind when leaving your bike behind. Of course you have to remember that it’s not waterproof: the bike bell is just as easy to install as removing it from your bike. If you’re touring with an expensive (cargo) electric bike, for example, a GPS tracker built into the motor is a better idea.
The AirTag bike bell is on sale at tagjefiets.nl for €64, which includes the AirTag itself.
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