DIY Air Tag Keyring: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Apple's Official Solution

The Apple AirTag is a popular tracking device that allows users to locate their misplaced items with ease. However, one user discovered an innovative way to create a DIY version of the AirTag keyring using minimal disassembly and no expensive tools required. In this article, we'll explore the step-by-step process of creating a DIY Air Tag keyring.

Removing the Battery

The first step in creating a DIY Air Tag keyring is to remove the battery from the device. The user starts by removing the battery cover, which can be done by prying it off with a plastic spudger. Next, they locate the battery compartment and carefully remove the battery. This can be done without any special tools required, making it an accessible project for anyone looking to create their own AirTag keyring.

Marking the Spot

Once the battery is removed, the user marks out the spot where they want to drill a hole to attach the keychain ring. The recommended location is around 7 o'clock on the device, taking into account the metal dots that make contact with the battery. This ensures that the hole is aligned properly and provides enough grip for the keychain ring.

Choosing the Right Drill Bit

With the spot marked out, the user selects the right drill bit to create a small hole in the AirTag. The recommended drill bit size is 1/16", which is smaller than the original hole created by Apple. However, this smaller size provides enough room for the keychain ring to grip onto without being too loose.

Drilling the Hole

The user then proceeds to drill a small hole in the marked spot using the chosen drill bit. This requires some trial and error, as the user needs to find the perfect balance between creating a clean hole and avoiding any damage to the surrounding material. The DIY user notes that wearing eye protection is recommended during this process.

Scratching Off Excess Material

After drilling the hole, the user scrapes off excess material around the edges using a file or sandpaper. This helps create a smooth surface for the keychain ring to grip onto.

Attaching the Keychain Ring

With the hole drilled and the excess material removed, the user proceeds to attach the keychain ring. They insert the ring into the hole and twist it clockwise until it clicks into place. The DIY AirTag keyring is now complete.

Testing the DIY Air Tag Keyring

The final step is to test the DIY Air Tag keyring by attaching it to a keychain or bag. To their surprise, the device still functions as intended, beeping when moved. However, the user notes that the hole is small and may not fit perfectly onto other keychains.

Apple's Official Solution vs. DIY

In comparison to Apple's official AirTag keyring, the DIY version is surprisingly affordable, with third-party options available for around $5 on Amazon. Additionally, the DIY approach eliminates the need for special tools or high-quality materials required by Apple's solution. However, it's worth noting that the DIY Air Tag keyring may not provide the same level of durability as the official product.

Conclusion

The DIY Air Tag keyring is a creative and cost-effective alternative to Apple's official solution. By following these simple steps, users can create their own tracking device using minimal disassembly and no expensive tools required. While it may not be as durable as the original product, the DIY version provides a similar level of functionality at a fraction of the cost.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlet'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 gonna 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 gonna you're gonna avoid that you're gonna 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 gonna i'm gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 youlet'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 gonna 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 gonna you're gonna avoid that you're gonna 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 gonna i'm gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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\n"