Tracking devices have become increasingly popular since Apple's AirTags launched earlier this year. They're similar to Tile trackers, and the premise is simple — you can easily link one to your Apple account and it'll use Apple's Find My network to find it. As long as your AirTag is in close proximity to someone's iPhone, you'll be able to see its location. And you don't even need an iDevice for that now, as Apple has released an official app for tracking AirTags on Android devices. There is one rather important caveat, though.

Tracker Detect is one of a handful of Apple apps available on Android, joining Apple Music, the Beats app, and an app for moving to iOS. You can use it to track nearby rogue AirTags, and if you want to pinpoint one, you can use the app to play a sound on it. From there, you can either scan the AirTag using NFC or disable it by removing its battery.

While it's pretty neat, it's also very basic in functionality. It lacks auto-scan, which means that you need to specifically fire up the app to search for a tag, and you won't get notifications about lost AirTags nearby like you would on an iPhone. You could argue that actually makes this Tracker Detect app somewhat useless — a lot of people in the reviews section agree that the app should be able to auto-scan. Scanning manually for AirTags around you every 5 minutes is not the most productive way to spend your day.

It's not like there are barriers towards making that happen on Android phones, either — it's just Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). And allowing non-Apple devices to auto-scan for AirTags, and have them contribute to Apple's Find My network, would also greatly improve the success of locating AirTags in general, especially outside of the United States. I guess it's better to have something rather than nothing at all, though.

As Apple points out in a statement to CNET, enhanced privacy is the main aim of this new app: "Tracker Detect gives Android users the ability to scan for an AirTag or supported Find My enabled item trackers that might be traveling with them without their knowledge. We are raising the bar on privacy for our users and the industry, and hope others will follow."

If you want to scan AirTags with your Android phone, you can download the app from the Google Play Store right now.

Image credit: Daniel Romero