Does not happen often, but my wife lost her phone on a hike, walking one of our dogs.
She came back to the house, dropped off the dog and said she was going to search for it. I gave her my phone so she could call it and listen for the ring.
So, what would be a good app to download on each phone to trace the location of the other phone?
We are a little creeped out about this, but after this little adventure, want to get something.
We are android only, and on the same carrier.
I have Google’s “Find My Device” on my phone, tablet and PC. Free from the Play Store.
It’s saved my sanity twice when I left my phone in Safeway.
Do authorities need special permission/a warrant to use the same system to find your phone?
And it’s built into the iOS if you have an iPhone, you just have to make sure it’s enabled. You can then log onto a web site with your Apple ID and trace your phone. It helped me find my phone once when I left it at a Subway.
This should work the same with every Android device. So your wife should log into her Google account on any other device, your phone or a laptop or whatever, and look into her personal settings for something like “devices”, identify her phone and then something like “tracking” or “locate”. Sorry, I never had to do this (fortunately) so I don’t know exactly the actual steps, but I do know that I once enabled that function and am capable to do so in the case of a lost phone.
The “find my device” functionality does exist on both platforms but must be enabled. If you want something with less fuss, there is also Location Sharing in Google Maps, you explicitly allow a person to locate your phone continuously (and you can do it reciprocally in your couple). The locations update every few minutes, to save on battery. Not for everyone, of course.
I have used Find My Device many times on my Android phone. It doesn’t even require an app, just using a website. It comes up automatically when I look it up in Chrome, but not other browsers. (There is another Google link that often comes up that just gives instructions to call your phone. It is useless.)
I never had to enable anything to use any of this.
Thanks folks, I’ll look at these. It’s very weird to be so tied in to… everything. But here we are.
I’ll look at this stuff.
DH and I use an app called Real Time Tracker and he’s more than once located my misplaced phone that way (cue rant about inadequacies of pockets on womens’ clothing that I suspect your wife would have some comments on as well). If I’m not mistaken, one can also use Google’s Find Hub for this as well.
Does the “Find my Device” feature also require turning on GPS? I usually have GPS off to save battery, so if it needs GPS on that wouldn’t help me, unless I changed my habit.
Most of a phone’s location information doesn’t actually come from GPS. As I understand it, the biggest source of location data is which WiFi sources are visible, and how strong they are. They also get data from the strength of signals from various cell towers, integration of the accelerometer, and inferences from the map (if you’re moving in the direction of a freeway at 70 MPH, it’ll assume you’re actually on the freeway, not 50 feet off to the side and parallel).
Though, if you lost it on a hike, the GPS might be more significant. Hikes are usually in places outside of WiFi range, and can be on less-mapped routes.
Makes sense. I could tell that my wife was in the backyard and I was inside.
She just went for a bike ride with her phone. She wants me to try to track her. I’ll try.
I can only track my phone with my computers, and my wifes only with her laptop. But that’s ok. They are tied together. We have all our pwd info.
Found my wife on her bike ride. It’s kind of creepy. But we want to be able to do this for each other.
I believe on the Apple side, the Find My feature works by broadcasting the phone’s location via Bluetooth, which is detected by any nearby iPhone. That information is passed onto the owner. Apple also sells AirTags, which are little round discs that can be attached to bicycles, luggage, keys or whatever, and can be used to locate the item.
A vicarious experiance. While I helped my wife with a lot of bike racing, I haven’t road since Jr High School. I bought a recomended bike but it’s way too small for me. (on sale, go figure). We will keep that bike for friends and company and I’m going to get properly fitted.
For android, simplest way without having to install any additional apps is to enable location tracking on each other’s google maps profiles.
We would have to download the Google Maps app it appears. We use phones for communication.
Interesting, I’ve never seen an Android phone that did not have Google Maps installed by default.
I donno. I just don’t use phones for that kind of stuff… as I sit in front of two computers.