Lost your smartphone? Don’t worry, the device’s location feature can help you locate it. However, you must ensure that the feature is turned on at all times. Here’s what you need to do.
Apple devices: If you have an iPhone (iOS 13 or higher), go to Settings and tap on your name, then “Find Me”. Make sure “Find My iPhone” is turned on.
You can also turn on “Offline Search Enabled” on the same screen. This allows you to find devices that are not connected to a WiFi or cellular network.
Also on this screen, you can choose to turn on “Send last status”, which automatically sends the phone’s status to Apple when the battery is critically low.
To be able to find your lost iPhone on a map, you need to turn on Location Services under Settings> Privacy> Default Location Services.
Android device: People with Android phones need to sign in to their Google Account on the phone to be able to find their device. You also need to make sure that the Find My Device and Status settings are turned on in the app.
Android devices should also appear on Google Play. If you hide it there, this file will not appear in My Device. To see if the device is visible, open play.google.com/settings and under “Visibility”, select the device.
Phones can now be located using other Android or Apple devices or by visiting www.android.com/find or www.icloud.com. – DPA
