I replaced my AirTag battery and it's not working

Hand sanitizer worked for me. I had to repeat once on one battery but it worked. You need to use enough to give it a good coating, wait 30 seconds or so then rub it off with a towel. If it still doesn’t work try it again. I had Purcell with aloe on hand but I’m sure any brand will work.

FYI:

Duracells have a child safety Bitterant coating.

Energizers don’t.

Bitterant coating apparently functions as an insulator in this application.

See “note” immediately following Para 3 in this article:

How to replace the battery in your AirTag - Apple Support

I hope you hadn’t tossed them yet. If they are the child safety batteries by Duracell that is why they are not working. They should be fine in other devices. Many suggest wiping them with alcohol. I couldn’t find any alcohol at home so I tried hand sanitizer. And now my Duracell works in my AirTag

Hi DianeKE,

I was looking around for some replacement batteries for my AirTags and came across some comments around the web similar claiming that the Duracell branded CR2032 batteries don't seem to work in AirTags. Long story short, apparently the Duracell ones have a bitterant coating on them that causes this problem. See Apple's How to replace the battery in your AirTag article for more on this. Some people have overcome this issue by cleaning the coating off the battery by various means.

Hope you find this helpful.

I have Duracell batteries with the bitter coating. I had success with hand sanitizer (Purell with aloe). I rubbed some on the positive + side of the battery and it worked.

I tried the alcohol and it didn’t work, but I did try using sandpaper and it worked like a charm.

I have tried several solutions - hand sanitizer, alcohol, sandpaper, deleting AirTag - but none work. Will try another type of battery. This is maddening.

What I have found the Duracell cr2032 has larger negative rim than Panasonic cr2032 in which it will not make contact with the negative case of the battery! Basically we will have two big companies that will argue over the battery specifications size. Off to buy another kind of battery

There’s a small coating on the Duracell battery preventing functionality. No idea why.

Simple Solution: Use sandpaper (scratch the surface) on the edge and back of the Duracell battery. I used a piece of metal.

(see where the apple nodes make contact to get specific about where to scratch the surface).

Your air tag will function after this.

The Duracell, CR 2032 batteries with the “child protective, bitter coating“ never work in AirTags. The first time I actually used sandpaper on the surfaces in order to remove that coating. After doing that the battery worked. Of course I didn’t especially like having a chemical lithium battery whose surfaces have been sanded, so I went and bought Eveready instead of Duracell. If you find Duracell batteries that do not have that coating on it, and the package will tell you, they will work fine.

It appears that the Energizer 2032BP-6 also has a coating or needs to be sanded. Sending worked.

Thanks.

You’re at least the 2nd community member to report that Energizer has now apparently “jumped on” the Bitterant Coating “train.” 😕

This worked for me too, thanks!