AirTag Cases

An AirTag on its own is a smooth disc with nothing to attach it to, which is why most of them spend their first month loose in a drawer.

The holders here give it somewhere to live: on a keyring, clipped inside a bag, buckled to a suitcase handle or threaded onto a collar. Once it is attached to something you would notice losing, it starts doing the job it was bought for.

The tag sits in a leather pocket that is deliberately tight when new. It loosens slightly over the first week as the leather takes the shape of the disc, and then it holds.

You will need to open it roughly once a year to change the battery, which is a standard CR2032 and takes about a minute. The holders are stitched so the tag can be pushed out from behind rather than prised at with a fingernail from the front.

The fitting decides where the tag can go, so it is worth picking that before the colour.

• Split ring: for keys, where the tag is handled several times a day.
• Carabiner clip: for a bag, a belt loop or luggage, quick to move between them.
• Loop: threads onto a strap or a collar and stays there.

Keys are the obvious one, and they are also the case where a holder earns its keep fastest, because a bare tag on a keyring scratches within a week.

After that it is luggage, where the tag needs to survive a baggage belt, and a bag that gets left in offices and cafes. A quieter use is a camera bag or a tool case, the things that are expensive, portable and easy to put down somewhere and walk away from.

No. Leather is not conductive, so Bluetooth and the ultra wideband signal pass through it in the same way they pass through a jacket pocket. Metal is what interferes, which is why the fittings here are kept away from the face of the tag.

The speaker is a fair question too. The holders leave the back open enough that the tag can still be heard across a room, which is the whole point when you are looking for keys in a flat.

Is the AirTag included? No. These are holders, and Apple sells the tags.

Can it go on a dog collar? The loop models can. Check the collar width against the loop measurement on the product page.

Can it be engraved? On most of them, yes. Initials work better than a full name at this size.