What it finds · Certain

🏷Bluetooth tracker detector: AirTag, Tile and SmartTag on Android

AirTag, Tile, Chipolo, SmartTag and the rest. Told apart from your own, and from a lost one.

Wavelens reads the tag's own broadcast, including the bit that says it has been away from its owner, so a tag that keeps pace with you across stops gets a real alert and a tag in your own pocket does not.

What it is

A small Bluetooth tag made to find lost items: keys, luggage, bikes, pets. It has no GPS of its own; it is located by the phones of passers-by that hear it and relay its position to the owner through a crowd-sourced network.

Who uses it

Almost everyone, for their own belongings. The same tags are occasionally misused to follow people, which is why phones now warn about them.

What it can see

Nothing directly. It reports where it was heard, which can amount to where you are if it is travelling with you.

What it can't do

It cannot record audio or video, and it cannot see you. A tag with its owner nearby is just someone's keys.

How Wavelens finds it

BLE advertisement manufacturer ID and payload layout for the Find My, Find My Device and Samsung networks, Tile and others; the status bytes that say whether the owner is nearby; and address type (rotating addresses are typical).

What to do when you see one

If it keeps pace with you across stops and is not yours, treat it as a separated tracker and search. Your phone's built-in unwanted-tracking alert can usually make it beep.

Phone or companion?

The phone alone detects this over its own Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; no extra hardware is needed. A Spotter companion ($64, ESP32) on the dash hears further and can park on single Wi-Fi channels a phone only visits briefly. Full Spectrum ($499, a Raspberry Pi with RTL-SDRs plus a Spotter) adds sub-GHz sensors and radio, which this kind does not need.

Questions

Can an Android phone detect an AirTag?

Yes. AirTags and other Find My accessories broadcast Bluetooth LE all the time, and any Android phone can hear them. Android has its own unknown-tracker alert, and Apple publishes a manual scanner app for Android. Wavelens adds tags from the other networks (Google Find My Device, Samsung SmartThings Find, Tile, Chipolo and more), reads whether a tag reports being away from its owner, and scores each one against your own route so a tag that keeps pace with you stands out.

Does Wavelens find every tracker?

No. It hears trackers that advertise over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. A tag with a flat or removed battery is silent, and GPS trackers that report only over the cellular network have no Bluetooth broadcast to recognise. For those, a physical search is still the answer: see the car-check guide below.

Will it alert on my own AirPods, keys or tag?

Mark your own devices as Mine once and they never alert again. A tag with its owner nearby reports that in its broadcast, so a passer-by's keys are listed but not treated as a tag travelling with you. You choose which kinds sound an alert in Setup.

Do I need extra hardware?

No. Tracker detection uses the phone's own Bluetooth. A Spotter companion ($64, ESP32) on the dash hears Bluetooth further than a phone does, which helps in a car but is optional.

Related: How to check your car for a hidden tracker · Following you: how a tag riding along is scored

Classification is a best-effort guess from public signature data. Check before you act on it. None of this is a claim about who owns a device, why it is there, or whether it is lawful.

Where this comes from

• Apple Find My network accessory specification; AirGuard (TU Darmstadt) research
• Google Find My Device network public documentation

Other kinds

• 📷 Plate readers
• 🎥 Body cams
• 🚁 Drones
• 📱 Following you
• 🎙 Acoustic sensors
• 🛠 RF and pentest tools
• 🚦 Traffic sensors
• 🚌 Fleet vehicles
• 📹 Cameras and doorbells
• 🚗 Vehicles
• 📞 Phones
• ⌚ Wearables

Join the free Android beta Hear it sooner: companions from $64