Apps and trackers to find your lost gadgets

Being out and about without your smartphone might make you feel exposed. We rely so heavily on these gadgets that losing them is a major issue, stopping you from texting friends for help or finding your route back home.

Losing any similarly important gadget, such as your laptop, causes an equally severe headache. We’ve gathered tech that discovers your tech to help recover these misplaced gadgets. These six applications and trackers can plot your gadgets on a map, compel them to emit audible sounds, and do other things to help you find each other.

1. Find My iPhone, iPad, or Mac for Apple
Apple wants you to keep its gadgets secure, so it included a phone and tablet tracker in iOS and a laptop finder in macOS. Enabling the capability on all of your Apple devices will allow you to see the current position of any device on a map.

2. Find My Device for Android
Google, like Apple, has incorporated a device-locating utility called Find My Device on Android. To activate it, go to Settings and then select Security & Location. To begin tracking your phone or tablet, enable the option. Then, on a backup phone or tablet, install the Find My Device app.
You have a few choices for determining the location of your device. Open the app on your backup device, go to the Find My Device web page, or just go into your Google account and search for “Where’s my device?” You can have the lost machine play a sound (even if it’s in quiet mode), lock the device while its screen shows a message, or delete your data, much like with the Apple service. View its last known position, battery level, and even the name of the Wi-Fi network to which it is now connected on a map. Based on this information, you can determine whether it is permanently lost or retrievable.

3. Find My Phone for Samsung
Owners of Samsung devices may utilize the aforementioned Google tracker or Samsung’s built-in Find My Mobile feature, which functions similarly. To gain access, please create a password-protected Samsung account.

Next, activate the tracker by going to Settings, selecting Lock Screen and Security, and then selecting Find My Mobile. Make sure the Remote Controls switch is turned on in this menu so you can control your phone or tablet from another device.

If your device is lost or stolen, go to the Find My Mobile website and log in using your Samsung credentials. You may view the last known position of your phone or tablet on a map here. Like the other tracker applications, you can ring your smartphone even if it’s in silent mode, lock it so no one else can access it, and remotely erase it if you don’t believe you’ll get it back.

You may also execute other essential actions from the same website, such as unlocking a device whose PIN you’ve lost and backing up data. Simply select the appropriate choice from the list on the right-hand side of the webpage.

Prey is compatible with any operating system.
Prey can cover iOS, macOS, Android, Samsung, and Windows devices because it works with different operating systems. Furthermore, it has a few useful capabilities that its competitors do not, such as the ability to take a photo with the device’s camera or observe its screen activity, perhaps allowing you to determine the identity of a thief.

Download the Prey app to your preferred device and establish an account, just like you did with the other tools outlined above. Once enabled, the Prey website may display the position of a device on a map as well as its current signal strength. You may also remotely lock your device, delete its data, set an alert, and even extract information while it is still connected to the internet from the site.

Physical trackers: Tile Software isn’t the only option to keep tabs on your devices. You can connect a little Tile Tracker to almost anything; however, this approach works best with goods you’ve misplaced in your own home. The hardware trackers use Bluetooth to connect with an associated app (for Android and iOS); therefore, the range is limited to 200 feet.

When something goes missing, simply launch the Tile app and check the last recorded position of each tag. This should get you started in the right direction. You may also have a Tile Tracker produce an audible sound by pressing another Tracker that has been associated with the missing one, and Amazon Echo and Google Home commands are supported.