Apple and Google Both Have Ways to Find Your Lost Devices: Here’s the Winner

Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find My Device each allow you to discover misplaced gadgets, together with telephones and Bluetooth trackers. Apple’s Find My can search for merchandise just like the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and AirTags, plus some third-party units like Nomad’s Tracking Card. The Find My Device community can seek for Android units like telephones and tablets, Wear OS watches just like the Pixel Watch, supported headphones and Bluetooth trackers akin to Chipolo’s One Point.

Google’s community expands on and rebrands the 11-year outdated Android Device Manager, whereas Apple’s Find My community has been round since 2010. But how do the networks examine in 2024? 

Watch this: Apple’s Find My vs. Android’s Find My Device Network

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To discover out, I took the Chipolo One Point and an AirTag to Pier 39, the most well-liked vacationer vacation spot in San Francisco. Then, CNET’s John Kim hid the trackers outdoors of Bluetooth vary and I needed to find them utilizing the Find My app on an iPhone 14 Pro and Find My Device on a Google Pixel 8 Pro. Here’s the way it went.  

How Find My and Find My Device work

Both Apple and Google’s methods use an encrypted, crowdsourced community of different telephones and units working iOS or Android to assist discover misplaced gadgets. They every allow you to: 

• See an merchandise’s present and final identified places on a map
• Play a sound to seek out an merchandise if it is close by (if supported by the gadget)
• Share gadgets akin to Bluetooth trackers with a pal to allow them to additionally see the placement

Setting up Bluetooth trackers on every community may be very simple. Bring them near your telephone and a pop-up seems. With Chipolo’s One Point, you may must press down as soon as on the tracker to get it to register with Android and set off the Fast Pair pop-up.

How Find My and Find My Device differ

Apple’s Find My community has had a slight leg-up because it bought overhauled in 2021 to help discovering third-party gadgets and in preparation for the launch of the AirTag. Compare that to Google’s Find My Device, which bought related help for third-party units and trackers earlier this yr.

At this time, Find My Device trackers solely help Bluetooth, whereas Apple’s AirTags use each Bluetooth and extremely wideband. This is the know-how that helps pinpoint a exact location and exhibits distance indicators with path help within the Find My app.

Apple’s AirTags even have separation alerts, referred to as Notify When Left Behind. Select this feature from the Find My app and you will get a notification if you depart one thing behind, outdoors of Bluetooth vary.

Apple’s Find My community solely wants a single iPhone or iOS gadget, related to the web, to move by to find a misplaced merchandise. If a Find My gadget is not related to the web and crosses a misplaced merchandise, the merchandise’s location is encrypted and handed on from Find My gadget to Find My gadget till it will get to 1 that’s related, like an iPhone.

Google’s Find My Device settings are set to “with community in high-traffic areas solely” as default. This means the community wants a number of Android units to move by to detect an merchandise’s location and solely then exhibits you a middle level triangulated from these location experiences.

However, you’ll be able to go to Security > Find My Device > Find your offline units and alter that to with community in all areas. That may help discover different folks’s gadgets in decrease site visitors areas and solely wants one different Android gadget to find an merchandise, just like Apple’s Find My. Android’s official Find My Device assist web page says, “customers who activate this feature assist one another discover gadgets in each higher-traffic and lower-traffic areas. This possibility might enable you to discover your misplaced gadgets extra shortly.”

For the needs of this experiment, I left all settings on default to see what would occur.

Which tracker did I discover first?

Once the AirTag and Chipolo tracker had been “misplaced” collectively someplace in Pier 39, I loaded up the apps on the iPhone and Pixel 8 Pro and marked every as misplaced, then began a timer. Just 4 minutes and 45 seconds into the problem, I bought the primary notification from Apple’s Find My. Five minutes later, I bought one other ping finding the AirTag.

I waited half-hour to see if Google’s community would discover the tracker, however I did not get any notifications. I may, nevertheless, see an approximate location of the Chipolo tag on a map within the Find My Device app. Confusingly, the community was in a position to triangulate an approximate location, but it surely by no means notified me that the tracker was discovered.

Then I went searching for the trackers utilizing every app’s built-in location instruments. Apple’s Find My gave me strolling instructions to the AirTag on a map, so I may see it was just a few minutes away. Google’s Find My Device was much less useful and solely confirmed me a map view. Directions guiding me to the Chipolo tag’s approximate location solely popped up on display as an possibility a number of minutes later.

Once I bought inside Bluetooth vary, the AirTag let me deliver up exact monitoring choices utilizing extremely wideband so I may transfer the telephone round and have an arrow level me in the appropriate path with distance markers. By distinction the Chipolo tracker has a form that “fills in” as you get nearer to an merchandise.

I knew I used to be shut, however I nonetheless could not see them, so I performed a sound on every. The AirTag was fairly faint, however I may hear the Chipolo even within the loud surrounds of Pier 39. 

So the extremely wideband instructions helped me get nearer to the AirTag once I could not see it, however the loud sound of the Chipolo made an enormous distinction find the tracker.

Apple’s Find My community is extra strong, for now

My extremely unscientific check confirmed that Apple’s Find My community helped find my misplaced merchandise a lot quicker than Google’s Find My Device community. I’d count on this to enhance over time because the community continues to roll out throughout Android units, notably if extra customers decide in to finding gadgets in all areas. Adding extremely wideband help to Android’s trackers would additionally degree out the enjoying subject — many Android telephones have already got an extremely wideband chip.

I sit up for revisiting this problem in a few months to see how Google’s Find My Device improves, particularly as soon as extra units leap on the community.

In a press release to CNET, a Google spokesperson stated the corporate is working to enhance each the pace and talent to find misplaced gadgets on its community over the approaching weeks: “Devices are persevering with to hitch the brand new Find My Device community, and we count on the community to develop, which can even assist enhance misplaced gadget findability. We encourage Bluetooth tag house owners to vary their Find My Device community setting to “With community in all areas” to assist enhance the community’s potential to seek out their misplaced gadgets in lower-traffic areas.”