Near Field Communication (NFC) products Online Store
Worldwide Shipping (free DE shipping)
A UID must always be read when the NFC chip is used to identify a specific product (e.g. a garment) or security measures (seals) are associated with the NFC chip. Find out more about possible everyday applications of NFC tags here.
A UID is an identification number consisting of letters and numbers, 7 bytes in size. The UID is globally unique, read-only and can be read by most NFC devices and all NFC-enabled smartphones. The UID cannot be deleted or changed, so each NFC chip is uniquely identified.
In this article, we explain how to read the UID with iOS.
Content:
Read the UID of an NFC tag
iPhone models starting with iPhone 6s can read NFC tags. But although iOS 14 and higher can scan an NFC tag without any additional app, an external app is still needed to display the UID of an NFC chip.
Therefore open NFC21 Tools and tap on Read NFC Tag on the bottom of the screen. Then hold the desired NFC chip against the top back of your smartphone.
When the NFC tag has been successfully scanned, a new entry will appear in the list. For us this is called "Empty". Tap on the new list entry to display the UID.
Here you can also simultaneously get more information about the NTAG formatting, write protection, size and content of the scanned NFC chip.
You can copy the UID of your NFC tag to the clipboard by long tapping.
Summary
In this article, we briefly explained how the UID of any NFC chip can be read with iOS.
Associated operating systems
iOSFirst published: 19.08.2025 / Updated: 19.08.2025