AirTag 2 is supposed to be safer than a silent tracker, but the AirTag 2 speaker can still be defeated with basic tools. ZDNET’s teardown report says it took about two minutes to open the tag, disable the sound, and close it back up, with the tracker continuing to work afterward.
That’s not a niche concern. The speaker is the loud, obvious warning you’re meant to hear when an unknown AirTag is traveling with you. Remove the noise and the tag gets tougher to spot, especially in situations where you’re trying to locate it quickly.
Apple has spent years adding anti-stalking protections. This kind of quick hardware tampering shows how easy it is for someone to route around the most intuitive safety signal.
A simple mod, same result
The same report describes getting inside AirTag 2 with a single spudger, then silencing the speaker fast. After reassembly, the tag still powered on and functioned normally, it just stopped making noise.
That combination is the problem. A tracker that still reports location but no longer announces itself shifts the burden onto the person being tracked to notice alerts and hunt it down without the help of sound.
The safety gap stays open
The report also points to a steady market for altered tracking tags, with speaker removal or disabling described as the most common change. It argues that physical modifications like this can slip past broader anti-stalking efforts.
None of this means most people will run into misuse. But it does mean a key safety feature can be defeated quickly, and the device can keep doing the one thing that matters to a bad actor.
What to watch next
A potential counter is software. A firmware could check whether the speaker is drawing current when an alert is triggered, then flag a mismatch if the circuit is effectively dead.
The fix also doesn’t have to be only software. A small physical deterrent, like epoxy, could slow down quick tampering.
For now, the practical takeaway is to watch for Apple’s response and future updates. The teardown is being tracked over time to see whether an update breaks modified tags or throws an error, and that outcome will say a lot about how serious Apple is about closing this loophole.