How to Unlock Hidden Debug Mode for AirTags in IOS 14.5
AirTags Apple has a hidden debug mode that you can easily access on a connected device (ideally an iPhone). And while the features found inside won’t give you magical tracking capabilities, you can at least enjoy some AirTag tracking-related data. This, and you can change some of the colors as well.
To start working in debug mode , you need to connect to the AirTag device. Then turn on Precision Finding by opening the Find My app, selecting the AirTag for search, and clicking the green Find icon. Once you’ve done that, you should see the usual “where the hell are my stuff” screen, which you would otherwise use to navigate your environment to see where the mentioned AirTag fled to:
To access the hidden debug menu for your AirTag, simply click on the name of the item you are trying to find four times. This should bring up a screen that looks pretty wild:
Before you start messing around, you can take a screenshot and remember what adjustments you made so you can manually undo them. This is a little confusing as users most likely never intended to see it, so you need to make sure you are not configuring anything that you might lose.
Besides, there isn’t much you can do. The debug screen – as long as Apple allows you to access it – allows you to customize the display of the exact search screen, but you probably don’t need (or want to) mess with the number of dots displayed on the screen. Similarly, you can mess up the Precision Finding camera input by using the top two sliders you see to change the blur effect you see when looking around looking for your AirTag. Again, there are more settings that you probably don’t want to change.
Most importantly, the bottom four sliders are what you will use if you want to customize the color you get when you block your missing AirTag. Of course, this is just a cosmetic change, but if there is a specific style you prefer for the entire iPhone, you can now transfer that to your AirTag Precision Finder as well.
And it’s all. There’s nothing to play with here, but it’s always fun to look under the hood of your iPhone. At the very least, it will be a great party trick – assuming Apple keeps the feature.