Google’s Find My Device Service May Allow Offline Android Device Tracking
Google’s Find My Device service may be enhanced so that users may track their Android or WearOS devices even when they are not connected to the internet. With the current version of the service, users can only locate, lock, sign out of, and wipe linked devices that are online and connected to the same Google account. The feature was first announced in the changelog for Google’s System Update for December 2022, which said, “Find My Device now provides encrypted last-known-location reports for Android devices by using a new privacy-centric framework.”
Find My Device is a service that currently enables users to track Android and Wear OS devices that are online. These functions are only available when the device is online, so if a device is remotely erased, Find My Device will no longer be able to locate it. Users can remotely lock their device, sign out of it, and delete their Google account from it. By doing a device reset, another person may also disable the setting.
Soon, Find My Device might receive an upgrade that will enable communication between Wear OS and Android smartphones, making it simpler to find lost or stolen devices. Additionally, the device-locating service will be end-to-end encrypted, just like Samsung’s and Apple’s solutions, preventing anyone else from seeing the location of your device. According to the article, Samsung’s SmartThings Find can identify a Galaxy device even while it is offline by using Bluetooth to connect to other Samsung devices and transmit the location to the user.
Despite being less potent than Apple’s system, it has more than 200 million discover nodes to assist users in finding their gadgets. Similar technology is used by Apple to track devices through the Find My app as well, although it is apparently even more secure than Samsung’s method. It’s still not clear when consumers can expect Google to release the new features, but the December 2022 changelog suggests that they may be nearing completion and will be part of Android 14.