Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Drilling Through Apple AirTags…”.
Let’S get locked and loaded now, the key thing here is that you have to drill your hole in a very specific location, click, clap, so we’re about to do something, i’m not 100 sure why we’re doing well. I know why we’re doing this caught me off. Guard came out of left field. These air tags came out. They took the world by storm.
Everybody was talking air tag, air tag, this and air tag that i did a video on this right here, which was the super luxurious hermes, apple, air tag with the engraving and uh, and the fancy french leather on it. This setup over here is uh costing uh. I don’t know like 400 or something obviously outlandish and beyond what most people are going to purchase for their air tag, but the air tag itself. They kind of need something. So apple sells this keychain, which is a not the same caliber leather as the hermes model.
But you pop your air tag in here and then this is like, i don’t know another 29 bucks, so the air tag is 29. This is 20, something they sell. You the accessory.
That’S the current way it’s set up, but then the people over at ifixit determined that hey you don’t need this. You don’t need to buy this if you’re on a tight budget – and you want to attach your air tag to your key chain. You can just drill a hole into the air tag and i was like well who’s gon na go through the effort of that, and so i posted a clip. We talked about it on lou later and then this clip ends up getting 234 000 views, which is more than usual for a clip, and so i was like do people actually want to do this, or do they want to see this happen? Uh? I guess there’s some interest here and then same goes for the ifixit post, which was making the rounds and getting covered in a lot of places.
So then i was like there’s. Obviously, some level of demand for people who want to attach the air tag straight to a typical key ring without the need for replacing their entire key chain. They want to do it on a budget. Now it’s important to mention at this point that the other products the competing products from tile, even though the footprint is larger, as you can see in this image right here, like they’re, not the same scale, they’re a little bit bigger, but tile puts the key ring Right into their devices at least some of them, so you don’t need to pick up any type of accessory if you want to use it on your keychain and it appears if you look at apple’s marketing and and what other people are saying, it appears that the Keychain use is the most obvious one for the air tags, so we have an air tag here today.
I’M going to attempt to do this easy process, easy process that has been done elsewhere online and i’m going to attempt to put a hole into the air tag. So we can find out once and for all if this is actually a feasible solution before i do this, we’re going to do a disclaimer, obviously, that this uh this device has some water resistance. This device has some ip rating on it and, if you’re putting a hole in it, chances are you’re gon na you’re gon na avoid that you’re gon na lose that. So this is a do it your own risk type of thing.
It’S helpful that the device is only 29 but still – and i’m also going to say before i do this – i wouldn’t do this myself. If it wasn’t for this youtube channel, i would just put it in the the case and pay the extra money, but hey diy. It’S 2021 there’s going to be people want to do it themselves, and so that’s what we’re going to do today, all right, let’s get locked and loaded now. The key thing here is that you have to drill your hole in a very specific location, because you have electronic pieces inside of here.
Obviously that you wouldn’t want to drill through, or you would have a catastrophe. You would kill the air tag before you even get started. Oh and i’m not going to put the hole in the hermes air tag by the way i’m gon na i’m gon na put it in the standard air tag, which is what i have here. So, in order to find the right location, electronic components inside just don’t just go drilling anywhere, you actually have a pretty specific spot or a couple of spots to choose from.
In order to achieve this, so shout out to ifixit for actually x-raying the thing fully disassembling. It in order to find the correct location to do this, you’re also going to need a very specific drill bit because you don’t have much room to play so you’re going to need a small enough hole that you don’t completely destroy the air tag going through the Spot that you need to so step. One here is to remove the back of the air tag and to reveal the battery. This is pretty straightforward, you just that’s it. Actually. Some are saying: that’s too simple to get the battery out because then you might get it out accidentally or a child might get it or something like that. But anyway, for our purposes, that’s helpful that it’s so easy to get off. We remove the battery like this, and now we have our air tag and believe it or not.
You do not need to do any extra disassembly from this point right here. That’S all you need to do as far as taking it apart as i place it down here, you see these three sections where this portion will clip in and twist into the air tag. Those are your options, but according to ifixit, their favorite location is down here. Uh next to or near this particular clip now, the next step after you got here is to mark out where you want to drill. So i’m going to put my dot in that area right there sure here.
So the favorite location here is around seven o’clock and with these three metallic dots facing up where the battery makes contact – and you want to be as close to the edge of the gray material as possible. So i’m going to be right on this edge right around. Here there we go, that’s my spot supposedly, i don’t know how accurate i’m gon na be able to hit that this is a little bit uh.
Well, it’s trial and error. Isn’T it that’s the thing about it, any type of diy? So now i need to get the correct bit and what you’re going to want to use here. Like i said it’s got to be small 1. 16.. I’M ready to go! That’S all it takes. You wouldn’t normally use something like this, but it’s what we have so probably want to be wearing some eye protection.
If you were gon na attempt this yourself, but remember i’m not recommending that you attempt it anyway. That was surprisingly easy to do. Uh easier than i expected. Okay hold on yeah, i’m just gon na like scratch off some of the excess material wait a sec.
This is actually feasible. Hang on a second, it’s not as crazy as i had thought it was when i saw people doing it now. I don’t know how well it’s gon na hold to be fair. If i just that’s a surprisingly clean little hole right there, and so, if you were trying to uh, spend the minimum amount of money you could just avoid the keychain. I don’t recommend doing it, i’m not! You would have to test this for a period of time to know that was going to stay on there, but there appears to be enough plastic left over to give you the necessary grip on your key ring to do this. All right so put the battery back.
In and then we’ll put the back on and that’s why the spot is so important, because if you look from the back, you actually don’t have much room over the backing. To find your position, i’m pretty perfect there as far as giving you enough space over the metal back now. If i just take this key ring right here and let’s see how this goes now, i think i had to make that a bit bigger. I went with the bigger drill bit, so i started at 116 and then ended up at 564. have to be a little bit more careful coming through with that, because you have even less material up top. If you do that, but as you can see, it still works battery back, let’s see if it beeps it beeps the back back on there we go check it out, diy air tag keyring. You know what it’s when i saw these and i was like you’re crazy. You can put a hole in the 30 tracker, i’m a little less, i’m there might be an actual case to be made here and i know obviously apple wants to sell you.
They doubled up right. They double up the price if they sell you this, but, more importantly, the profit margin, because the manufacturing of this is a lot less than this. This little diy might be worth considering. Let me see if i can get this on to the other. This one is still tight, but yeah, let’s see when you’re on a key ring like this. The hole is so small that it will not go all the way around. It’S going to stay pretty much trapped in the central portion of the key ring, which i guess that’s not it’s not a big deal. It is totally doable and surprisingly feasible.
It doesn’t feel as fragile as i expected it. I thought there wasn’t going to be any good material left over to grip onto, but it appears there’s enough of it a diy with some credibility. I think we found here that this is an option, keep in mind what i said, though, about the ip rating. I don’t know where it is: you leave your keys or how you plan on treating it, but uh.
It’S not that’s like a half price key tracker right there. Oh, i should also mention you: don’t have to buy apple’s official key ring either you could go on amazon and find these for like five bucks from some third party. So that’s another option, but maybe you just enjoy putting holes in apple products, in which case it appears. You can do that with the air tag. Wow cool you .