The phone vibrates but nothing opens
The vibration is good news. It means the phone found the tag, powered it and read it, so the hardware on both sides is working. What failed is the next step: the phone found nothing in the content it knows how to act on.
What the vibration means
Detection succeeded. The phone produced a field, the tag powered up, answered, and its content was read.
Everything physical is therefore working: the antenna, the chip, the distance, the surface, the case. That eliminates most of what people go on to investigate.
What comes next is a separate step. The operating system looks at what the tag holds and decides what to do about it, and that step can find nothing to do.
On Android 17, a tag holding a web link adds a visible stage: the NFC basics guide says it shows an open link notification, and the page opens only when the user acts on it. A vibration followed by that notification is a read that worked and is waiting for a tap.
Three reasons nothing opens
The tag is empty. Formatted, readable, and holding no records. Common on new tags and on tags that have been erased.
The content is not a type the phone acts on. A record can be perfectly valid and describe something the operating system has no default handler for. Plain text is the everyday example: it is read, and there is nothing to open.
The record header does not say what the payload is. If the field that declares the payload type is empty or unknown, the phone has a payload and no instruction about it, so it does nothing.
Finding out which one
Read the tag with a tool that shows the records rather than acting on them. In seconds you see whether there are records at all, what type each one is, and what it contains.
No records means an empty tag. Records present with a text type means content the phone will display rather than act on. Records with an unknown or empty type declaration means a writing problem.
That single read replaces all the guessing, and it is why a reading tool belongs in any diagnostic kit.
Fixing it
For an empty tag, write the content you meant to write.
For content of a type nothing acts on, decide whether that is what you wanted. Text on a tag is legitimate when the point is to display something, and a web address is what you want when the point is to open something.
For a bad type declaration, rewrite the record with a tool that sets the header properly. This usually comes from software that wrote raw bytes without the surrounding structure.
And verify by reading it back after writing. A tag that vibrates and does nothing is exactly the failure a read back catches before deployment.
Frequently asked questions
Does the vibration mean the tag is fine?
It means the tag was detected and read, so the hardware is working. Whether the content is useful is a separate question.
Why does plain text not open anything?
Because there is nothing to open. A text record is content to display, and phones treat it differently from a web address, which has an obvious action.
My tag has a URL and still nothing happens.
On Android 17, look for an open link notification first, since the link waits for it to be tapped. Otherwise read the tag and check the record type rather than only the content: a web address written with the wrong type declaration is read and not acted on.
Is a formatted tag the same as a written one?
No. Formatting prepares the tag to hold content and leaves it empty, which is exactly the state that produces a vibration and nothing else.