Android “Find My Device” has received a major upgrade. Here you can find out what’s new

The exact steps to sign in to Find My Device vary by device. However, on Pixel phones, when you first set up the handset you will be asked if you want to enable the feature. You can find the same options later by going to the main Settings screen and then selecting Security and privacy > Device finder > Find my device. Turn on the toggle switch to make your device discoverable.

An additional icon will appear on some phones, including Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 phones Find your offline devices Entry: Tap to choose whether your phone can be found when it’s offline and whether or not your phone should be used to find other gadgets. Put this up Out of If you do not want your handset to be discoverable in offline mode and you do not want it to be registered on the Find My Device crowdsourcing network.

Find My Device gives you options once you find a phone.Courtesy of David Nield

The other options here are Without network, With network only in heavily frequented areasAnd With a network in all areasand they contain a description of what each one means. Basically, the more places you welcome by integrating your phone into the crowdsourcing location network, the more places your own phone can find – and at greater speed. The more you invest in the network, the more you benefit from it.

If you want to keep track of your devices, there’s the Find My Device app for Android. Of course, you can’t use this app on a lost device because you don’t have access to it. If you can access the app on a secondary device, you can see your registered gadgets on a map, lock and wipe them remotely, and make them play sounds (very helpful if they’ve been dropped on their back). the couch).

There’s also the Find My Device website, where you can sign in with your Google account in any web browser tab. The options here are the same: you can get the last reported location for each of your devices, have it triggered, lock it remotely, or remotely reset it completely to factory settings if someone else gets their hands on it.