Apple AirTag Modding: How I Silenced the Speaker in Under 2 Minutes

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | February 4, 2026 | 1,247 words

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Stalkers can disable AirTag speakers to make them harder to find
• I disabled the speaker in two minutes with basic tools
• Apple could still push an update to detect tampering

I’ve been a longtime AirTag evangelist. I’ve got them attached to everything from my car keys to my luggage, and they’ve saved me countless headaches when I’ve misplaced something or needed peace of mind while traveling.

They remain, without question, the best Bluetooth tracking tags on the market.

Also: The best Bluetooth trackers of 2026: Our top picks to keep tabs on your stuff

But I’m also acutely aware of their potential for misuse. While Apple and Google have implemented robust anti-stalking measures—alerting users when unknown trackers are moving with them—hardware modifications still present a significant privacy loophole.

My recent investigation revealed a surprisingly active market for modified AirTags, with speaker disabling being the most common alteration. A silenced AirTag becomes exponentially harder to detect, as it can no longer emit the audible alert that helps locate rogue devices.

I want to be clear: modifying an AirTag isn’t inherently malicious. There are legitimate reasons someone might want a different form factor or disabled speaker—perhaps for embedding in a custom project or using in a noise-sensitive environment.

Also: Modified AirTags pose major privacy concerns, especially for Android users

But there’s no denying that a silenced AirTag makes clandestine tracking significantly easier.

When Apple released the second-generation AirTags, I was hoping they’d addressed this vulnerability. Even a small amount of epoxy resin inside the casing would have made unauthorized access considerably more difficult.

Talk is cheap, so I bought a new pack of AirTags and put them to the test.

I decided to approach this as someone with minimal tools—no heat guns, no specialized solvents, no precision equipment. Just one tool: a simple spudger (that plastic prying tool you probably have lying around from some previous electronics repair).

Also: I built a custom AirTag that Apple will hate me for—and how you can do it too

The process was shockingly straightforward. Within minutes, I had the AirTag opened, the speaker disabled, and the device reassembled. The entire operation—from unboxing to final reassembly—took less than two minutes.

Here’s what surprised me most: the new AirTags felt easier to open than the original version. The adhesive Apple uses seems less aggressive, and the internal components are arranged in a way that makes access simpler than before.

I was concerned the modified AirTag might not function properly after reassembly, but it powered on without issue and connected to my iPhone normally—completely silent, of course.

This raises an important question: what can Apple do about this?

While they can’t make the hardware completely tamper-proof without making repairs impossible, they could potentially address this through software. A firmware update could monitor electrical current across the speaker circuit, detecting when the system attempts to activate the speaker but receives no response. This could trigger the AirTag to become inoperable or at least alert the user that tampering has occurred.

I’ve kept my modified AirTag to see if Apple eventually pushes such an update. Will it suddenly stop working? Will it display some kind of error message? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, this experiment demonstrates that Apple’s physical security on AirTags hasn’t meaningfully improved—and in some ways, may have regressed. For a company that prides itself on user privacy, this represents a significant oversight that bad actors are already exploiting.

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