With Apple tracking devices like AirTag and Find My iPhone, Google is now looking to follow in Apple’s footsteps with its new accessibility metric for the Find My Device feature commonly used to locate Android devices. However, Find My Device really only works when the user has access to an internet connection and their Google account.

Recently, the XDA Developers mobile software development community heard about a Find My Device network in code for beta testing on Google Play services. This new version of Google’s device locator service would aim to use crowdsourcing to find your device. Additionally, the code suggests that this new feature even allows a user to use Android to locate not only their devices, but those of other Google users as well.

For now, it looks like this new tool would work over Bluetooth, mostly working in close proximity to tracking and lost devices. Based on what XDA developers can put together so far, users should probably go for this service, a useful feature for security and privacy purposes. Additionally, this device would likely be able to work with an Apple AirTag, which means a wide range of easily located devices for users who have stayed close to their lost items.

Since more people use Android than even iPhone, Google could develop the most efficient device locator yet – if such a tool ever comes out, of course. XDA Developers suspect Google could reveal more information about this service in its upcoming Android 12, which will be released in September 2021.

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