Five new tech solutions to keep your bike safe

Bike theft sucks. Anyone that has developed a serious, maybe too serious, attachment to their two wheeled companion knows that sinking feeling when you think your trusty steed is no longer where you left it. But the proliferation and miniaturization of technology is here to help. Maybe.

There is a new wave of devices that are either for bikes or can be adapted to use on two wheels, that promise to help us track our bike should a thief run off with it. Most of them promise the ability to see where your bike is going once it leaves your possession (probably) and open up the vigilante fantasy of tracking down your stolen steed and … being responsible and contacting the relevant authorities for assistance recovering it.

You still need a good lock

Before we dive in, let’s be very clear: the best way to recover your bike is to not have it get stolen in the first place. That means a good lock and secure storage. The narrative arc of my research for this story involved increasing excitement and optimism as I discovered more options building towards, ultimately, disappointment as I figured out the limitations (and there are many) of these tech solutions. They are great as additional steps, in combination with other efforts, but none a silver bullet just yet. They might help enough that they’re worth looking at, but that depends a lot on where you are and what the thieves do with your bike once they have their hands on it.

Tiny trackers (Airtags/Eufy/Tile, etc)

Ever since Apple released the AirTag, riders have looked for ways to use them to protect bikes. Apple isn’t the only tracker tag, or the event the first. Tile predates AirTags and is one of the few options that works with Android instead of confining users to the Apple ecosystem.

Can you use Apple’s AirTags to find a stolen bike?

All the options use a similar design, allowing tracking via a close-range signal. AirTag and Eufy tap into Apple’s Find My system (and app, though Eufy has a parallel app you can use as well). Tile has its own App and system. That means all of these trackers only work if other users of the same system are nearby. For anything using Find My, that’s anyone with an Apple device. For Tile, it’s a little more complicated, but the same basic premise. All trackers have their own additional features which do, or do not really help in the specific use case of a stolen bike (Tile shows last location, for example). But the same limitation applies: since they require…