Could anyone tell the function of "that" in the following sentence?

The AirTag is also far from perfect. I wish they were louder — they are very quiet compared with Tiles — so playing sound wasn’t very helpful for finding them. I also did not love that for most purposes, the AirTag requires buying a separate accessory, like a key ring, to hold the tracker.

In contrast, the Tile has a hole punched into its corner to attach to a key ring or zipper head. (The $29 price tag of the AirTag is eclipsed by Apple’s $35 leather key ring.)

As I read an Apple AirTag review, a New York Times article, I encountered the sentences above.

I wonder what "that" in boldface works as in the sentence.

If "that" in boldface is a demonstrative pronoun as usual, it should represent the immediately preceding sentence, or the deficiency of the device's being too quiet.

But the fact seems to me a bit odd that "I also did not love that for most purposes" is immediately followed by "the AirTag requires buying a separate accessory, like a key ring, to hold the tracker," which can stand alone as a complete sentence, with no conjunction but only a comma.

Please explain the function here of "that" in question.

Solution 1:

That in the sentence is not a demonstrative pronoun. It's a subordinating conjunction, and functions in exactly the same way as

She said that the AirTag requires something to hold the tracker.

She didn't like that the AirTag requires something to hold the tracker.

Lexico has a number of examples of that as conjunction.

Solution 2:

I also did not love [that for most purposes, the AirTag requires buying a separate accessory, like a key ring, to hold the tracker].

No: this "that" is not a demonstrative but a subordinator functioning as a marker.

It introduces the bracketed declarative content clause functioning as complement of "love".

You could paraphrase it as I also did not love the fact that for most purposes, the AirTag requires buying a separate accessory, like a key ring, to hold the tracker.