- Google Pixel Fetaure Drop adds people who spur to find my device
- You can share your location with friends and family
- It appears as a separate tab for your devices
As part of March Pixel Feature Drop – and Android Update – Google Pixel phones (especially Google Pixel 9) received a handful of new tools. But especially one has occupied my thoughts because I’m not sure if I love it or hate: Find my device’s new people’s tracking.
Finding my device is Android’s version of Apple Find my network. It brings together all your connected Bluetooth devices and the Android products you have signed, and gives you an easy way to quickly find these gadgets, use directions for their last location or make them play a time so you can hear where they are lost.
It’s all for the course, but the new tool also allows you to chase people down. Well, it lets friends and family chase you specifically through the New People tab (which is currently in beta) if you choose to share your location with them. This works in about the same way as Google Maps, only now you can also see people in Find my device.
On the one hand, this is super useful. Being able to quickly share my location with people will be great when I try to organize, say, a meeting as I can direct them all to my exact location at the touch of a button instead of sending vague directions. Alternatively, after a night out I can share my location with friends and family so they can see that I was doing it home for sure.
Is it safe?
At the same time, all these tracking apps (of which find my device from Google only one that is also Life360, Glympse and Google Maps to name a few more) make it clear how easy it is for us to be found by our phones, and certainly makes me think twice about the threat of digital persecution – especially with news as Apple Find MY’s recently discovered Exploit.
Fortunately, there is digital protection in place with all these services where the most important thing is that you have to manually send your location to the people you choose. Finding my device will also warn you when tracking is activated (like many other services), so you are reminded that your location is not private – which means you can either turn it off or keep it active if you still want to share where you are.
And if you’re worried about being traced by tags you haven’t authorized, Android Tech can automatically warn you about the presence of unknown trackers and help you find them – it may even get some compatible trackers to play a ringtone to make it even easier to find them.
Overall, the new Find My Device people are probably falling closer to the useful side of the equation than the creepy. If you are eager to find out more about the recent functional feature, here are my choices for the seven best tools, Google just added to Pixel phone and watches.
