Technologies

On Your Next Trip Stash an AirTag in One of These Spots

Traveling soon? Get peace of mind with your belongings and place your AirTags here.

Daylight saving time is behind us and there’s more sunlight to soak up: cue spring break and summer travels. Traveling can be exhilarating and refreshing after months of consistent grind, but nothing is worse than having a great time only to have it ruined when you misplace your personal belongings. If you want peace of mind and an extra layer of security for your things while you explore, you’ll want to understand all of the benefits Apple AirTags have to offer.

These tiny gadgets are small enough to be discrete but powerful enough to locate items like a bag, purse, luggage, or keys. They’re fairly easy to set up and once installed to your phone, you don’t have to do much else. But other than those main ways mentioned previously, here are uncommon ways to get the most out of AirTags that you may have never considered.

How do AirTags work?

Generally, you need to be within Bluetooth range to find your AirTag, but you can use Apple’s Find My service to locate Apple’s tiny tracker if it’s farther away, as long as it’s still in range of another Apple device. (Here’s how the Find My network works.) To do so, just put your AirTag into Lost Mode and you’ll get a notification once it’s within range of the Find My network.

For more details, here’s how to tell if an AirTag is tracking your location on Android and a deep dive into AirTags.

5 uncommon places to put your AirTags

🏕️ Put an AirTag in your tent for camping

If you’re setting up camp in a location you’ve never visited, it could be useful to place an AirTag inside your tent so you can easily find your campsite. For instance, if you decide to hike several miles one day, you can use Find My to look up the AirTag’s last location (your tent) and get directions back to the campsite. Remember, it’ll need to be within range of someone else’s device, so don’t rely on this out in the wilderness. (This is also why Apple advises you not to use AirTags on pets.)

Read more: AirTags Are Not the Best Way to Find Lost Pets

🧥 Put a tracker in your jacket pocket

How often have you left your coat behind in a restaurant, bar or friend’s house? Forgetting to grab your jacket when you head out is easy to do, especially if the weather is warmer than you expected or your hands are full of leftovers and to-go cups. If you know you’ll be hanging your jacket on a coat rack or the back of a chair when you arrive, place an AirTag inside the pocket so you know where you left it. This can help prevent yet another favorite jacket from getting lost, and less money out of your wallet to replace it.

🧳 Stash an AirTag inside your luggage

Airports can be tricky to navigate, and can be especially difficult when you’re trying to find the correct luggage pickup. Sometimes you wait 30 minutes until your bags finally roll out on the conveyor belt, and sometimes they get lost. To relieve the stress of trying to locate your suitcase, you can put an AirTag tracker inside so you can track its whereabouts.

This can help you find out if your bags were left on the airplane, if they’re on the conveyor belt but you haven’t spotted them yet or if someone mistakenly grabbed your luggage. Once you find out where your bags are, you can remedy the situation and continue on to where you’re going. Don’t worry, AirTags are TSA-approved so there’s shouldn’t be any issues with placing them in your luggage.

Read more: 7 Google Maps Travel Tips for a Stress-Free Holiday Experience

🎒 Stick a tracker inside your laptop bag

Laptop bags can be easily left behind at a cafe when you’re picking up coffee for everyone at the office. When your hands are full and you’re distracted wondering how you’re going to open your car door, it’s hard to remember to grab your bag from the booth you were sitting in. That’s why it’s a good idea to place an AirTag inside one of the pockets. You will be able to locate your expensive laptop and save any confidential company or personal information in your bag.

🚲 Hide an AirTag on your bicycle

If it hasn’t happened to you, you probably know someone who has had this experience. You get home from a bike ride, go inside to grab water and something to eat and completely forget about the bike you left outside. Or maybe you went to the store, didn’t lock your bike up and when you came back it was gone. If you place an AirTag in a hidden place on the bike, you can easily locate it.

We don’t recommend tracking the bicycle down on your own. It’s best to notify the police and let them retrieve your bike so you can avoid any dangerous situations. This method also works on your car if it’s been stolen or towed, or if you can’t remember where you parked it. If you have an iPhone and it’s connected to your car via Bluetooth, your phone can locate where you last left it.

More common areas to put an AirTag

AirTag is commonly used to locate these items.

Your keychain.
Your purse or wallet.
Your phone or tablet.
The remote to your TV.
Anything valuable that you leave outside your home.

For more Apple information, read how to make Siri glow and turn off Apple Intelligence.

Technologies

Your Favorite Patreon Creators Will Soon Be Able to Livestream From the Platform

The new tool lets artists go live, chat and share content all within Patreon.

Patreon, the service that lets artists and creators provide exclusive content to subscribers, is launching a new tool that enables creators to livestream natively on the platform.

The company said the feature intends to let creators connect with their audiences in real time, whether it’s an author hosting a Q&A about a newly published book or musicians testing out new music for their fans.

The tool directly competes with similar offerings on platforms like Twitch, but a focus on creator-owned communities and fewer distractions.

Read more: Best Laptops of 2025

«Until now, creators have had to go live on platforms that weren’t designed to prioritize their businesses,» the company said in a statement. «We’re changing that: because it’s built directly within Patreon, creators won’t need to compete with crowded feeds, distracting ads, or anything else that gets in the way of connecting creators with their core fans.»

Some can access feature this week

Creators will be able to go live via the Patreon mobile app or desktop, with options for free or paid member access, allowing them to tailor streams for audience growth or earnings, according to the company.

The platform is also adding a live chat for real-time conversations, emoji reactions that appear over the video player and moderation tools that let creators set the tone for their communities.

Creators will also have the option to share livestream recordings with fans who missed the event or download the videos for use on other platforms.

Patreon said some creators will receive early access to the feature as soon as this week with a wider rollout planned for later this summer.

Will Patreon creators use it?

«It’s interesting, but I won’t be using this yet,» said Luke Westaway, content creator, Patreon user and former CNET senior editor.

Westaway says he values consistency for his subscribers.

«I do weekly livestreams on YouTube just for Patrons which they access via an embedded player in a Patreon post, and in my experience Patreon subscribers value consistency and predictability in their content and I’m very cautious of anything that switches up how they access it,» he said. «That said, there are some features you just can’t do on YouTube, like the promised ability to sell streams after the fact as one-time VOD purchases, which could be cool.»

Westaway has an established account, but he acknowledges new users might feel differently.

«If I was just launching a Patreon today, I might be inclined to commit to it, but for now I think I just have to wait, watch and see if it works and if Patreon still seems committed to it in 12 months,» he said.

Technologies

Zoom Is Down, According to Multiple Reports from Users

Video chat and meeting platform Zoom has been experiencing outages for many users today.

Following widespread outages for Spotify users on Wednesday, numerous users report that the online meeting service Zoom is also down. As of Wednesday midday Pacific time, Zoom’s website, support page and email client also weren’t available.

While these issues are currently preventing many Zoom users from making it to their meetings, it’s not clear what has gone wrong with the service or why it is so widespread. On Downdetector, complaint reports are highest for the website and app, followed by login attempts.

Users from Michigan, California, Texas, Nevada and New Jersey have all commented online that they are unable to use Zoom at their locations.

When CNET reached out to Lacretia Nichols, product communications and content lead at Zoom, she responded, «Thanks for reaching out. We are aware that some users are experiencing an outage. We are investigating and will provide updates.»

We’ll also keep you updated here if we notice any significant changes.

Technologies

How to Watch Fortnite’s Big Star Wars Celebration Live Stream

Will there be a full Star Wars-themed season of Fortnite? We’ll be watching this livestream with great interest.

Star Wars has seemingly returned to Fortnite. Following weeks of rumors that the hugely popular battle royale shooter Fortnite would be doing an entire season of content themed around a galaxy far, far away, it may soon be official.

On Wednesday, the official Fortnite account on X (formerly Twitter) revealed the game would be making a special announcement at the Star Wars Celebration in Japan on Saturday, April 19. While the Star Wars-centric season wasn’t confirmed in the post, it did tease «what’s coming next to Fortnite.»

There’s no specific time for when this Star Wars-Fortnite announcement will be made on Saturday, so if you’re interested in checking it out, stay tuned to the official Star Wars YouTube page, where all the Celebration livestreams are typically hosted.

Disney, LucasFilm and Fortnite creator Epic Games didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Is Fortnite Chapter 6, Season 3 based on Star Wars?

While this announcement seems to make things official, a Star Wars season of Fortnite has been rumored for a while now, based on claims from some of the game’s more trustworthy leakers.

On March 26, FNBRIntel claimed on X that Chapter 6, Season 3 of Fortnite would be entirely Star Wars-centric and feature «New POIs based on the series, new mythics & skins, and the storyline should connect to it in some way.» Other leaked info claims this new content will be focused around the original trilogy of movies, so sorry to be the bearer of bad news for all the Clone Wars fanatics and Reylo stans out there.

If you’re not familiar with Fortnite, then try bonding with the 10-year-olds in you life a bit more, as they have much to share on the subject. But what you need to know most is that a typical «season» can last a few months. It might seem strange for a game like Fortnite, well-known for featuring almost every IP ever created, to focus on one property for that long, so leaks have also indicated that Chapter 6, Season 3 will only last for about a month, running from May 2 to June 8.

Disney, LucasFilm and Epic Games have a history of working together, with Star Wars content and characters prominently featured in the game throughout the years. Most notably — and befuddlingly — a major canon story development key to the 2019 movie, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, played out exclusively in Fortnite.

Are any other Star Wars games coming to Star Wars Celebration?

As the name makes clear, Star Wars Celebration is a celebration of all things Star Wars, so you can bet your bottom credits that there will be more video game news than just a Fortnite collaboration. Earlier this week, Electronic Arts announced that Star Wars: Zero Company, a new turn-based strategy game from Respawn Entertainment and Bit Reactor, would be shown off at Celebration on April 19.

Respawn is the studio best known for creating the Titanfall shooter series and its battle royale spinoff, Apex Legends, as well as the acclaimed Star Wars: Jedi series. Bit Reactor is an upstart developer committed to strategy games featuring veteran talents that previously worked on the XCOM and Civilization franchises.